Onion Set Experiment YS3213 Update!

It’s been close to a month now since I planted thirty six yellow onion sets in a small raised bed on March 2, 2013. They are part of an experiment to chronicle how close to a perfect onion I can get. In past years, I’ve been frustrated in that many of my onions failed to significantly bulb up, while others bolted early on in the growing cycle. (See my ‘Onions are Easy to Grow’ video for some idea of how they have often looked)! The prior post can be found here.

For this experiment, I’ve used a loose soil and made sure to keep the plants well watered early on. I’ll need a cool spring too, for the best growing performance envelope, although I won’t be able to control that.

The planting grid I used here followed advice I found on the Internet that suggested each onion set be placed in columns spaced four inches apart with rows separated by six inches. Here is what that planting grid looked like pictured at right.

The weather, especially during the last couple of weeks of March was much colder than normal and so not much growth occurred. However, just recently, it’s begun to warm up nicely and good rates of growth have ensued. This picture at the top is a close up of a few of the larger plants (pictured are cells 12, 22 and 32). As you can see all of these sets are healthy in appearance with the 'large' set at top looking the largest. The only 'problem sets' consisted of a missing set in cell 26 (it was replaced) and a set that got somehow inverted - this was also corrected.

Scale is in centimeters

I measured each onion plant in terms of gross height just for comparison purposes. Row 1 consisted of the largest sets while rows 2-4 were medium in size. The bottom rows (5 & 6) contained the smallest sets of the lot. 

Interestingly, after I graphed out the results, I noted that most of the plants were relatively equal in size (± 2-3 cm) with the exception of the really large sets. 

So, everything is growing nicely. My next update will be on or around the end of April 2013.

Click on to enlarge

May 8, 2013 Update: Well it's been about 60 days since I planted the onion  sets and as you can see, they have grown quite a bit. At this time, I haven't seen any evidence of bulbing. The lower stem portions of some of the onions measured about 12 mm across.

May 22, 2013 Update: A fourth onion (cell # 4-4) had bolted and was harvested on this date.  The other three had bolted a week earlier and all of those were from the 'large' sized onion sets. This one was from the 'medium' sized sets. Of note too is another onion experiment that was started on the 17th of March of which there are also 25 plants - none of these have bolted. All the onions are about the same sized and none have shown any inclination to bulb up even as this experiment is entering the 80th day.

August 18, 2013 Update: I've been pulling onions out of this space for a couple of weeks now with plenty more to go. The average size was fairly small weighing in at about 43 grams. The picture here of three peeled onions weighed in at 130 grams. These guys, though small, were still a good investment as I have plenty to use for the next couple of months.

The high cost of online seed!

I’m not sure how companies like Burpee Seed manage to stay in the online seed business. I went to their site to order a packet of romaine seed yesterday and discovered that not only was the cost high ($4.95), but the shipping costs for that one small packet was also $4.95, bringing the total for this purchase to $9.90! Wow! A packet of seed for just under $10? What’s wrong with that picture? No way could I afford that kind of price structure. Especially, considering the fact that the very same item is should be soon available at a local Home Depot garden center for about $1.99!

Now, it’s true. For me to actually get to the seed, I’ll have to burn some gas. In my case, it’s a 30 mile round trip (I live in the country) and the cost in gasoline ($3.52 a gallon) would be about $6. So, unless I was going there for other purchases, I’d end up paying almost the same. Blame it on the skyrocketing cost of gas. (A problem that’s sure to get worst with a left leaning Administration bent on banning all fossil fuels).

I found that a better alternative would be for me to shop locally for seed. Every year about this time, my local Country Mart and even the hardware store down the road, have a few seed display racks out. And while the selection is rather limited, at prices as low as .99 a packet, that’s still quite a bargain.

An experiment in growing onion sets!

Yes, each onion is numbered!

As a part of my desire to grow bigger and better onions from sets, I've decided to see if I couldn't quantify the results of me trying to grow 36 yellow onion sets that came in three basic sizes; large medium and small. I wanted to get a feel for how the starting size of a set could possibly affect the end result at harvest time.

So saying, I selected 36 onions that sorted out as follows:

Diameter is in cm & the weight is in grams

Other information that is pertinent to this effort was the purchase price of these sets at a local grocery store which came to .17 cents each (or 61 cents for all 36 sets). Also, note that the diameter of each onion was expressed in centimeters and the weight was in grams. 

I am planning on setting these guys out in about a week or so, or after the weather warms enough for me to work the soil in one of my raised beds. Just prior to planting I will amend the soil with a bag of composted manure and sand. With onions, I want a loose soil, but not one that has an overabundance of nitrogen, a situation that would grow large tops and small bulbs! So, no fertilizer, just well aerated and manured soil to start.

The spacing for these sets will be a rectangular area that is three feet by two feet. This will allow me enough space to plant six columns of set spaced four inches apart with each column set 6 inches wide. In other words, each little developing onion will have plenty of room to reach its full potential, whatever that may be.

To complete the start of this growing process, I plan to much the area to help preserve moisture and will cover it with a grow cloth to help keep the birds from plucking out the starts (something I'm told they enjoy doing). I'll also make sure to monitor how much rain falls, so that they get at least an inch of water a week. and, that will be about that with the exception of occasional weeding as the need calls for.

In order to track how large each onion gets (or doesn't get), I've made a data file that will contain information pertaining to starting weight and size and then what each set achieved at harvest time. To that end, each onion is numbered and will go into a known location in the bed when planted. 

In future installments that will follow this experiment (designated YS3213), I will be reporting on the progress of this little group of yellow onions. Later in the spring, I plan to do a similar setup for white and red varieties. So, stay tuned! To track this series, just do a search using YS3213 as a search term!

Growing the perfect onion in southwest Missouri!

And I should state for the record, that I’m going to try growing that perfect onion down in southwest Missouri where I'm sure it will be an interesting challenge!

Some years ago, I did a YouTube video titled ‘Onions are Easy to Grow’ in which I chronicled an attempt to grow a crop of onions from some locally purchased onion sets. In the video you can tell that many of these often-grown vegetables of the genus Allium were not very big even at maturity. And, while I didn’t complain, I wondered if perhaps I could do better a few years later in 2013!

To that end, I researched the growing of onions and quickly learned that although I could grow them from seed, the long growing time (4 months or more) made raising them in a Zone 6 garden somewhat problematic. I’d have to start them indoors early on and that seems to be a lot of bother. Instead, I opted to go with a batch of partially grown yellow onion sets that would require much less time in the garden before maturing. One cravat that I came across was the admonition to select sets that were at least ½ inch across as these would be ‘less likely to bolt’! I also read that I need to select ‘short day’ onions for my location here in southwest Missouri. Apparently, onions are sensitive to the length of the day to tell them when to bulb up. Interesting, I thought.

After I settled on using locally purchased onion sets, I next wanted to pay some attention to the soil I was to grow them in. I read that a ‘loose fertile and sandy loam’ type of soil was best and that I would need to keep the area weed free for best results. I also would need to make sure that the soil around the young plants was covered with mulch to help preserve moisture. Apparently, onions also need about an inch of water per week to keep them from ‘splitting’. Another tip concerned the application of fertilizers and or nitrogen. Apparently I would want to skip these as the added nitrogen would tend to promote lush top growth at the expense of the bulbs. That’s definitely not what I wanted to do! Finally, I was advised that once the tops begin to turn yellow, that I needed to take a rake and to bend them over – this action prevents the sap from flowing to the leaves and hastens the bulbing process.

OK! With this advice in hand and a bagful of onion sets, I was ready to get out and prep an area of one raised bed that I had set aside just for this effort. It was early March and I was ready to get out there and do my thing…

Next installment – Mid March 2013

Vegetable gardens that make an impact on personal finances!

When I say a vegetable garden should have lots of impact, I’m talking about that term in the context of the year 2013, a time when food prices may skyrocket.

Today is March the 1^st and two things come to mind; 1) this is the day when across the board cuts in both the government and the military are due to start and 2) a visit to the grocery store reminded me of why a vegetable garden can have some import on ones life.

Iceberg lettuce at $2 a head, bell peppers at $1 and even yellow onions going for .99 a pound were things that struck me this day. A fellow shopper and friend I ran into also remarked at the insanely high price of vegetables while showing me his pitiful pile of purchases resting in the bottom of his shopping cart. I smiled (inwardly) and agreed with him having gone down that same isle myself at little earlier. Only, for my part, I passed on the bell pepper for a buck deal. Way too expensive for my meager budget.

In another post, I talked about trying to grow the ‘perfect’ onions from sets. Actually, that may not be fair, as I feel any edible vegetable to be ‘perfect’ in some way. The main thing is to make sure you prepare you garden soil as early in the spring as you can work it and that you make a plan on what to plant and follow through. I.E. – that you actually end up with something for the plate or stew pot that also doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg! In my case, and for this season, I’m going to focus on high impact vegetables that will reduce the pain at the produce isle as much as possible! Here are my top five are in no particular order:

Potatoes – sure at $2.99 for a five pound bag, you might not think the lowly potato a good choice. However, given the fact that they are so easy to grow and that they offer a calorie per gram, I’m making sure to sow a four by four foot area this spring.

Carrots – When you talk about a vegetable that is both highly productive and nutritious, then the carrot goes far in my mind. An added plus is the small amount of space needed to produce a harvest that can keep over the next winter in the ground to be used a needed!

Bell Peppers – This is a ‘must have’ item in my book – I use bell peppers a lot in my salads during the summer as a substitute for celery which I cannot grow and which seem to remain high all year long in terms of cost. Due to the long growing cycle, I also purchase these as starts and don’t bother to grow them from seed. The small added cost in the spring is still offset come fall when these guys rise rapidly in price. They also can be chopped and frozen to be used in chilis and such over the winter! In this category are included a few plantings of Habanera’s and Long Red cayenne’s.

Romaine – These hearty versions of the watery iceberg lettuce I buy at the grocery store are much more nutritious and even a small planting, when properly spaced, go a long way! I plant this easy to grow veggie in the spring and then again in the fall. For the winter period, I also make sure to start some in cold frames in October so that they get to edible size and then go into ‘suspended animation’ inside the closed frames over the winter months!

Onions – When grown from sets, onions are almost a no brainer vegetable to grow. They can be planted together or thrown around into odd places all around the garden. And, while they may lack a bit in the nutritional department, they more than make up for that in terms of versatility around the kitchen. I used them in salads, as a topping on hamburgers and in most of my vegetable soup creations!

Well, that rounds out the list of my must have, high impact vegetables for the spring of 2013. And, while I surly will plant some other varieties (cherry tomatoes come to mind), I think these five will have the biggest impact in terms of saving a few bucks over the coming year!