Starting Onion Seeds - Tips for growing your best onions ever!
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- Опубліковано 19 січ 2024
- In this video me and my little helper demonstrate how we start our onions from seed. These are the first seeds we start for the 2024 garden so it is an exciting time!
We have found starting onions from seed rather than sets or transplants works much better.
As always, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments!
-Peter - Наука та технологія
We are always on the lookout for the longest storage onion. We are adding “Patterson” this year but do YOU have a favorite storage onion? Let us know!
Great job Heidi!!! ... and Peter too!
Well thank you! We had a lot of fun and now we get to go check on our baby plants together every day ☺️
Great video, thanks!
Thanks Ryan!
Thank you! I have been wondering about starting onions from seeds. We have just always bought onion "sets."
Hi Jane, glad this was helpful! We do have better results with onions we start from seeds. The other ways (sets and transplants) work but we got smaller yields and more chances of bolting. Happy gardening!
Hi Peter, in zone 5b should i wait a few more weeks to start my seeds? Thank you for this information.
You are probably good to start them pretty soon! We filmed this video last week. We generally plant ours out mid to late March and start them 2 months before. They can be planted out as soon as the ground isn’t frozen. So I’d count backwards 2 months from when your ground can be worked and start them then!
@@TheGardenFamily Excellent! Thank you for that information. I will be following you all year. Your videos are very informative!
I just stumbled across your channel, your approach is incredibly well thought out! Do you trim your onion seedlings (like a "hair cut") when they're several inches tall? I've yet to find good data for or against this practice. Thank you.
Well thank you! If they start flopping over I give them a haircut. I also cut them back right before planting so they new transplants don't have to support so much foliage. We actually just posted a video of planting these onions out today so you can see what they look like!
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I would be curious to see how you handle your onions at harvest time. I tried my best to set up a good curing place for them, and still quite a few of them developed a dusting of black mold just under the outer layer of dry skin. We used them as best we could, but I love to see them cured more successfully. Any tips? Maybe a future video.
Hmm, a few things come to mind. First is possibly harvesting too early. We want the plants to be flopped over prior to harvest. You can harvest earlier but they don’t store as well. Proper curing you already hit on but they should be totally dry and crispy prior to storing them. Then, in storage, make sure to put them in a place or hang them where they have good air flow so they don’t develop any moisture. Last thing would be variety: some onions just don’t store as well. In general long day onions store better than short day but of course you are limited by latitude in which you can grow. I’ll hopefully get a future video on this!
Thanks for the reply! Do you cure them in any way between harvest and storage? Or do you just let them get very dry in the garden and then immediately hang them in storage?
In my experience, I have had quite a few onions that have a long, more sturdy neck that don’t really flop over naturally. Do you ever see this?
Thanks for the reply! Do you cure them in any way between harvest and storage? Or do you just let them get very dry in the garden and then immediately hang them in storage?
In my experience, I have had quite a few onions that have a long, more sturdy neck that don’t really flop over naturally. Do you ever see this?
@@zachflynn6195 yes, we generally will leave them in our dry shed on wire shelves for a couple weeks to make sure they are perfectly dry before we store them in the cellar. Most of the time the necks are pretty floppy and have fallen over when we harvest them, perhaps yours just needed a little more time?
Thanks for sharing, I bought exact heat matt you have. What temperature do you set it to?
Oh good! For onions I set it at 75F :).
What about other seeds? Is there a general safe temperature? I plan to start all my seeds around end of March because my only space is the garage which is not insulated so I can’t start any sooner 😊
@@WatchingWildlife most cool weather plants prefer around 70-75F, while warm weather plants (peppers, tomatoes) prefer soil temps around 85F. So with that heat mat you can change the temperature on the thermostat to match the ideal temp for your seeds. You can find charts online but here is one: www.aces.edu/blog/topics/lawn-garden/soil-temperature-conditions-for-vegetable-seed-germination/
Hi! Which ProMix do you use? Seed Starting Mix? Garden Mix? Where do you find the best price? I'm located in Centerville, Ohio. Thanks!!!
Hey Sonya! You're not far from us =). Usually in October / November time frame we check local big box stores for deals on potting mix. I'm not super picky about the exact one I get, but I do prefer the peat moss based mixes. We found the pro-mix organic garden mix compressed bags (yellow bag) for $9 at a local wal-mart so we bought a bunch of bags in November... usually they are between $18-20. Many of the bagged planting mixes will work well but they need to be very fine so I'd avoid anything that says it's for "in ground" planting as they tend to be very coarse. Pretty much all the pro-mix varieties are peat moss based and very fine and work well for seedlings. Hope that helps!
Do the trays have holes in them?
They don't. I start almost all of my seeds in these trays. Once you water them in I don't water again until all the plants are fully germinated and I remove the cover. Eventually they will be transplanted into a larger 1020 tray with drainage holes, however!