• Home
  • ABOUT
  • VIDEOS
  • Contact
  • SHOP

The Impatient Gardener

Edibles, Garden

A great onion harvest proves taking chances can pay off

September 11, 2019

onions

These are the onions I grew this year. 

onions

I harvested them this weekend and they may be the single best argument for trying new things in the garden.I can’t give you poundage because I just pulled them and they are curing but I can assure you I’ve never grown more onions before. And here’s where it gets mind-blowing for me: I grew all those onions in less than half of an 8-by-4-foot bed. 

In the past I’ve always grown onions from purchased plants and spaced them maybe 4 inches apart. (I’ve never tried growing from sets, which is probably the most common way to start onions.) This year I did nothing of the sort.

First off, I started them from seed, having been persuaded by a variety of sources, including Savvy Gardening, which made a compelling argument for having a much better selection of varieties when you grow from seed. Starting onions from seed is one hell of a commitment. I planted these inside on January 31. 

Onion seedlings under an LED grow light.

Fortunately, by the end of January I was itching to plant something, and since onions are one of the earlier things that get planted in the garden, their high-maintenance period (once they got big enough to need frequent watering but were still inside) wasn’t too long. I sowed all of them in a single flat so they took up very little space under the grow lights.

I used Charles Dowding’s multisowing method to plant these and that took a bit of a leap of faith for me. Honestly I’d not heard of it before I saw Charles’s video on it and I’d become accustomed to planting onions with a healthy amount of space between each plant. And I may have made a big garden, but I’m all about maximizing the use of the space I have. When I planted these, I planted the seedlings in little clumps with up to seven seedlings in each. (Spoiler alert: Seven is too many.)

Onions multisown in the garden. The larger plants on the far end are garlic.

And that was it. The drip irrigation took it from there and other than the part where a rabbit decided to raise her family in the middle of my onions, all was well. 

baby bunnies

I came home from vacation in July to a family of bunnies living in my onions. As you might imagine, high jinx ensued. I have a story saved on Instagram about it if you love that kind of thing.

In fact all was more than well, because one of the great benefits of multisowing, is that you can pinch a few here and there to use as green onions. (Sidenote: Are green onions and scallions different names for the same thing? If they are different I can’t figure out what that difference might be.) And we pinched more than a few.

When you multisow you sacrifice size for quantity, which is a tradeoff I’m happy to make. I don’t need a two-pound onion because for an average meal we’d need a quarter of that at most. But I do need a lot of medium-sized onions. ‘Alisa Craig’ is known as a very large onion, so multisowing produced big, but not huge good-storing onions. 

'Alisa Craig' onion

‘Alisa Craig’, closest, is a large growing onion that becomes a perfect sized onion when multisowed.

Four onions in a clump (after green onion eating) seemed to produce the right size of onions. And as you can see, we’ve got plenty to sustain us.

I’ll be sharing these, of course, even though I know we could eat them all. I get great satisfaction out of sharing my garden’s abundance. And some of the onions, such as ‘Gold Coin’ a cipollina variety, won’t store well, so we’ll eat those over the next month or two. ‘Red Long of Tropea’, which is sweet, not sharp, won’t store well either, so we’ll get to work on those really flavorful onions soon as well. 

onions

‘Gold Coin’ won’t store well, so we’ll eat these first. They are delicious roasted or grilled whole.

I also grew ‘Patterson’, which is a fairly non-descript yellow onion that stores very well.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical of every part of growing onions this year, from starting from seed to multisowing. Thank goodness I gave it shot. 

Here’s to taking chances in the garden. 

onions vegetable garden
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
3 Comments

About Erin @ The Impatient Gardener

View all posts by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener

Related Posts

  • fresh turmericThe beautiful oddball: Growing turmeric
  • Large Brandyfred tomato in handThe success or failure of this garden comes down to one tomato
  • resdesigned gardenMidsummer garden check-in
  • evergreen espalierEspalier everywhere
previous post: Summer, celebrated with a perfect BLT
next post: Late season garden rescue: To salvage or call it a year?

Comments

  1. Nanette Brawer says: September 11, 2019 at 6:43 am

    Yum! They all look delicious and how I wish I was one of your sharing neighbors! Enjoy. I just might have to try this, come january!

    Reply
  2. Alicia Carvalho says: January 29, 2020 at 6:16 am

    Thank you for the great post! I was wondering what your spacing was between onion clumps when you planted them in your garden bed?

    Reply
  3. Diana L Weeks-Radke says: January 6, 2023 at 8:30 pm

    I follow your blog and tried this growing method last year and it was wonderfully effective! My question is how well did your onions store? I want to try this method again this year but I’d like to be able to store some. Another gardener I spoke to said that you can’t store the smaller onions, and I wondered if that was universal regardless of type. If you have any advice I would be very appreciative. I garden in zone 6 in Overland Park, Kansas.

    Cheers,
    Diana

    Reply

Leave Your Comments Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About

The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

Here's some more about me.

CONNECT

Awards

Garden Comm award

MY FAVORITE GEAR

https://www.amazon.com/shop/impatientgardener

Instagram

impatientgardener

Erin Schanen 🌿 The Impatient Gardener
Get your dahlia engines running. All the dahlia th Get your dahlia engines running. All the dahlia things are happening very soon. I actually started dividing my dahlias last weekend, about two weeks earlier than I usually do because the weather kept me cooped up inside. I’m glad I did it because I had some (not unexpected) losses that I’ll have to adjust some plans for. So stay tuned: we’ll be talking lots about dahlias soon. 😀
Want to give a gift to your future self? This fall Want to give a gift to your future self? This fall plant snowdrops and winter aconites and I guarantee you that it will bring you happiness the next spring. They are tiny blooms of joy.
A favorite groundcover and a favorite reseeder. Fi A favorite groundcover and a favorite reseeder. First off, you should know that I really love groundcovers. I would rather see a plant than bark mulch any time. Ajuga is a favorite because there are several forms (my favorites are ‘Black Scallop’, shown here, and ‘Chocolate Chip’) and because they can handle most conditions from sun to shade. Popping up next to it is Talinum paniculatum ‘Limon’ (Jewels of Opar). It reseeds around the garden and I just move it around where I want the chartreuse, succulent foliage. Tiny flowers in red and pink bobble on with stems, looking a bit like peppercorns. Then they drop their seed and come back the next year.
Make this the year that you grow a plant you know Make this the year that you grow a plant you know very little about. If you love your garden that’s all that matters. BUT I promise you’ll find even more joy it it when you broaden your horizons. I feel like I’m starting to see the same plants in gardens over and over again. By all means appreciate and love those plants, but also add something you have to learn about. There is great reward in getting to know new-to-you plants. 

Here are two good candidates you might consider: Athyrium niponicum (Japanese painted fern) ‘Crested Surf’ and Persicaria (or Bistorta, thanks to the taxonomists) amplexicaulis ‘Golden Arrow’.
Load More Follow on Instagram

SEARCH

Popular posts

  • HOW TO POT UP DAHLIAS FOR A JUMP ON SUMMER
  • No Mow May could backfire: Here’s why
  • Oh how I love a great garden path
  • A garden fence … finally!

Find us on Facebook

Archives

  • ABOUT
  • TALK TO ME
  • TERMS & DISCLAIMERS
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • Home

Copyright © 2023 · Prima Donna theme by Georgia Lou Studios

Copyright 2009-2021 ©The Impatient Gardener