The Magnificent Onion
It is springtime and that’s time to plant the magnificent onion in your garden. Did you know that the onion was first used over 7000 years ago in the bronze age and was believed to be a holy relic by the Egyptians, who believed that the round body and concentric circles were a symbol of eternity? Onions have even been found in some of the pharaoh’s tombs to bring luck to them in the afterlife. The humble onion was also used as currency during the Middle Ages to pay many debts.
Today onions, a member of the allium family of vegetables have a much more mundane lifestyle but they are still highly prized in many cuisines around the world. Whether fresh or cooked the onion has a sweet pungent flavor that helps to season almost any dish and luckily they are not too hard to grow in your garden. With a simple game plan and some good old elbow grease, you can grow enough onions to last all year as many varieties will keep in a cool dry place for up to 10 months.
The first thing that you will need is a plot in your garden that is well-drained and full of organic matter. Onions also need a lot of sunshine so be sure that their plot is not shaded. Speaking of sunshine, there are three different types of onions each labeled for the amount of sun they need per day. There are long-day onions for the northern gardener, intermediate onions for the central part of the country that has a lower average daytime than the north does, and short-day onions for growing in the short daylight hours of the southern US. Which kind of onion that you will use will be dependent upon your location. Onions can take a longer time to mature than many other vegetables taking from 90 to 120 days to mature, but the wait will be worth it.
There are three basic ways to plant onions. From seeds, sets, or plants the choice is yours and will depend on what you want your outcome to be. Onions are a biennial plant meaning that it takes two years to produce a full-size onion from a seed. While sets are more prevalent in the gardening world they are designed to skip the first year of seeding and growing and become full-size onions in only one season. Onion plants are already started onions that have been through their first year of growing and are ready to plant to make full-size onions in one season. Here at Country johns were use onion plants from Dixondale farms as our choice of planting onion. Don’t get too discouraged while waiting for your onions to mature as you can eat almost any onion as a green one before it bulbs out. Although this is a good rule of thumb it is best to get a variety of bunching onions or scallions to use as green onions as they will not bulb as fast as a regular onion.
When choosing your onion varieties, remember what kind you want and how long you want to keep them. There are several types of onions red, white, yellow, and sweet are all available and each has its place. Many have differing lengths of storage recommended even within their respective types but as a rule, the more pungent ones will last the longest with sweet onions only lasting a few months in storage.
Onions are easy to grow the best way is to plant them in a raised row about two feet across with a single row of onions on either side and a shallow trench down the middle for fertilizer. Onions are fairly hungry plants and will take some fertilizers in the 10-20-10 range throughout the season. to save yourself some weeding you can work in some pre-emergent herbicide into your onion bed and this will help to keep the weeds down to a minimum. Plant the plants or sets about one inch deep with the roots pointing down and wait patiently for harvest. If you have weeded diligently and fertilized every two weeks until they start to bulb then the onions will be ready to pull when the tips of the greens start to turn brown. Don’t wait too long or they will rot in the ground.
After harvest, it is important to place the onions in a shaded area off of the ground for at least a few days to a week to allow them to cure before hanging them in mesh onion bags to store in a cool dry place with plenty of air circulation. Here we lay them out on a plywood floored dark shed to dry and then hang them in a heated shed for the winter heated to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
That’s all that is needed to grow the marvelous onion in your home garden but get started soon as they are a fairly long-growing vegetable. Although it is a labor-intensive project you will be glad you did it when the snow is flying next winter and you are in your warm kitchen eating last year’s crop of onions. Good luck and great gardening.
