Consider planting onions the next time you plant a garden! I started planting them a long time ago because I read somewhere that they would help keep bugs off your tomatoes. I don't know if that's true or not--my tomatoes are rarely buggy--but I started then and haven't stopped.
We harvested ours yesterday and a few of them are really monstrous. I put a tennis ball next to them for size comparison, although the picture doesn't quite do them justice:
Here are the virtues of onions:
1. You can plant them early. I usually plant them in April and we live in zone 5/6. They're pretty hardy.
2. You can start harvesting them not long after you plant and use them all summer long. I think I started harvesting them in late June more as green onions but then as regular onions in July, August, and September.
3. They don't take up much space and they don't need a lot of water (important in my dry climate).
4. They are a very low-maintenance plant. Super easy.
5. You can harvest all the ones you didn't already use in late September or October, store them in a cool place, and they'll last for months. One year, I stored all of them in a box in my garage and they lasted us until March! It was a mild winter so my garage didn't get super cold. Considering all the green tomatoes I lose every fall, this is a great return on my effort. I did lose more onions this last winter because we had a really cold January so I didn't have a nice cool place to keep them. Plus, I also bought a big bag of onions from the store and I didn't use as many as I thought I would.
For big onions, I recommend planting onion plants, not sets. I planted onion sets for a long time and they're even easier than plants but they don't get very big. For the last 5-6 years, I have planted the little plants you get at the nursery and with basically no effort I have gotten some monstrous onions. We might have given them a little Miracle-gro, but not much. Full sun is critical though.
Onions from the garden don't really taste different from the onions at the store. But it is so handy to be able to run outside and grab an onion whenever I need one. So consider the humble onion!
We harvested ours yesterday and a few of them are really monstrous. I put a tennis ball next to them for size comparison, although the picture doesn't quite do them justice:
Here are the virtues of onions:
1. You can plant them early. I usually plant them in April and we live in zone 5/6. They're pretty hardy.
2. You can start harvesting them not long after you plant and use them all summer long. I think I started harvesting them in late June more as green onions but then as regular onions in July, August, and September.
3. They don't take up much space and they don't need a lot of water (important in my dry climate).
4. They are a very low-maintenance plant. Super easy.
5. You can harvest all the ones you didn't already use in late September or October, store them in a cool place, and they'll last for months. One year, I stored all of them in a box in my garage and they lasted us until March! It was a mild winter so my garage didn't get super cold. Considering all the green tomatoes I lose every fall, this is a great return on my effort. I did lose more onions this last winter because we had a really cold January so I didn't have a nice cool place to keep them. Plus, I also bought a big bag of onions from the store and I didn't use as many as I thought I would.
For big onions, I recommend planting onion plants, not sets. I planted onion sets for a long time and they're even easier than plants but they don't get very big. For the last 5-6 years, I have planted the little plants you get at the nursery and with basically no effort I have gotten some monstrous onions. We might have given them a little Miracle-gro, but not much. Full sun is critical though.
Onions from the garden don't really taste different from the onions at the store. But it is so handy to be able to run outside and grab an onion whenever I need one. So consider the humble onion!
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