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How We Plant Onions
 We purchase our onions as onion sets (small dry onions in mesh bags) from our local seed store. Set onions are year old seedlings that were harvested when young bulbs and stored over the winter. Do not buy onions in an onion set that are over 1/2” in diameter, because the larger ones can bolt and go to seed on you. You get about 100 small onions in a bag, and because of the low cost, we don’t bother with either plants or seeds. Onions like cool weather, being quite tolerant to light frost. Plant anywhere from mid-April onwards
To plant, first cut a 12” slit in the plastic and dig a shallow 1” trench. Plant with flat, or root, end down, into trench about 2” apart. Cover with soil and water lightly. As the onions mature, harvest every other one as a scallion (a young green onion) when they around 6” tall. This allows the remaining onions to become larger and to be used, and stored, as cooking onions.
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Harvest bulbs when the top leaves start to yellow and have fallen over, usually in August. Stop watering at this time and allow onions to ripen for a couple of weeks longer. After you have dug-up the onions, peel off just enough of the outer wrapper scales to remove the dirt, allowing them to dry in a shaded area. Store in a cool area for winter use. The yellow onions keep well, the red ones don’t keep very long.
We usually plant 10 red, 10 white, and 70 yellow onions, all from onion sets. Our onions always seem to do well, and we store them in the basement for most of the year.
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