If you struggled in the past with growing onions in your garden successfully,
I know I have, if that's you,
then this video will explain a couple of key mistakes that you might be making.
And they're not the mistakes that you would think.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it is our goal, my goal,
to help you grow a greener thumb. And onions really, let's think about them.
They're some of the most basic things, at least at a grocery store. Piled high,
they fly off the shelves. We use them in practically all aspects of cooking.
But man, sometimes they can be challenging to grow.
That's why we're going to talk about, first of all, how does an onion grow?
You have to understand that otherwise what's the point. And then number two,
what type of onion should you grow? And then number three,
we'll talk about the different ways you can start an onion or plant an onion.
So without further ado,
cultivate that Like button and I will personally call upon the onion gods to
bless your harvest so you have Epic big bulbs. And let's get into the video.
The first thing to understand is how an onion actually grows.
So when you plant the seed in the ground, leaves come out up top,
roots come out below. And these leaves are your energy producers for the plant.
It's not going to create a large bulb if you don't have nice and healthy leaves.
Now think about how it's actually growing. The leaves are coming out.
Those leaves sort of wrap around what eventually becomes the bulb.
So each leaf is a layer of the onion. That's how it actually works.
So when you get to about 13 leaves or so, that is the so-called perfect onion.
You've got 13 layers in there. But what happens is,
based on the length of the day,
that's when those leaves start to take the carbohydrates that are in the leaves
and start throwing them downwards into that bulb. So it starts to bulb up.
So if you don't have a lot of leaves, healthy leaves, large leaves,
then it's not going to send a lot of energy down into the bulb and you're not
going to get a good onion.
So you know the healthiest leaves produce the healthiest bulbs.
But there's also the distinction of type of onion, the categories.
And really the categories break down into where you live.
It's how far away you are from the equator.
And that's how long the days are in the summers when you're growing your onions.
So you have your short day onions, your intermediate day onions,
and your long day onions. Long day would be the furthest away from the equator.
Think about places like Alaska. I was there on my 30th birthday.
The days were easily over 12 hours long.
And that's what you want if you're growing a long day onion.
Now where I am here now, down in San Diego zone 10b,
we are in the short - potentially intermediate - but really the short day onion
range.
The reason the day length matters so much is because it triggers the bulbing
process. So for example,
with short day onions bulbing starts to trigger when the days reach the 10 to
12 hour range.
So that makes short day onion varieties good for about zone 7 plus.
Intermediate day onions,
those are around 12 to 14 hours or so,
and they're good for zones 5 to 6, but these are also the most adapted onion.
So you can push them outside of that zone. Then you've got your long day onions.
These are the ones that you can grow in zones 6 or below.
You're going to start them in late winter/early spring and they're going to need
at least 14 to 16 hours of sun to start that bulbing process. So let's imagine,
you know where you live, you know the type of onion you should grow - short,
medium or long. Now you have to decide, do I plant it from seed?
Do I get transplants or do I buy onion sets?
So let's start out with the most simple, and that would be onion seeds.
What do you get when you grow onion seeds? What benefits? So, first of all,
you're going to get way more variety.
There's just simply more available when you purchase packs of seeds than there
would be with transplants or with sets.
You're going to start those probably indoors or in a greenhouse and then you'll
plant them out in late winter/early spring.
And then they're also going to be the cheapest.
Seeds are just cheaper than buying transplants or sets.
Now the downside is time. It's going to take you a lot longer because again,
you're starting it from seed.
You're not starting it from an already grown point. Next up you have onion sets.
These are very small bulbs.
It's a commercially grown product where growers will let it bulb just slightly
and then they'll store it over the winter and then you can plant it out next
spring. Now the thing with sets is most sets are long day varieties.
So if you grow a set in a shorter/intermediate climate or latitude,
you're not going to get it to bulb because it's never going to reach that
minimum threshold of day length to actually start to bulb.
And so a lot of you may have bought sets from your local nursery,
but you're in a warm climate or a shorter day climate.
And then you just get green onions and it never bulbs up.
The reason why is because the set was a long day onion and you just never got to
that long day. Finally, you have your transplants. Now when I say transplants,
I don't mean you started from seed and then transplanted in.
I mean you go to a nursery or you buy online actual onion transplants,
and then transplant those in. Those are grown again from seed.
Commercially grown product.
And then what they'll do is they'll pull it when it's about four or five leaves
or so, and then ship it out and you can go ahead and plant it into your garden.
So you're skipping a lot of that seed starting process there. Again,
variety selection is probably going to go down.
You still have to make sure you choose the right variety.
But you can get a little bit of a head start on the season if you grow from
transplant. So my recommendation would be if you're in a short day zone,
so we're talking zone 7 plus,
I would go with either starting from seed or from transplants.
I might skip the sets unless you know you have sets from a short or intermediate
day variety. If you're growing in an intermediate zone,
I would probably still stick to the same rules there.
But then if you're growing in a long day zone up in those northern latitudes,
then you can do any of the three that you want. Personally, I used to do sets.
I used to make sure that I got the right sets for my area.
Now I'm moving more into seeds and transplants myself.
So there's no onions in this video because my onions are starting from seed in
my house right now.
So hopefully this explained a little bit of the intricacies of growing onions.
It really is a fun crop. There's so much variety there.
Maybe in a future video I'll do different types of onion varieties that you can
try out. But you've got yellows, whites, reds, all sorts of different colors,
shapes, sizes. Beautiful, beautiful varieties. But again,
you just have to know how the plant works in order to make the best growing
decision and have those huge Epic harvests of onion bulbs. So with that said,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.