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