One of the things we've learned about industrialized farming is that they look great but are nutritionally pretty shallow. Always remember to add plenty of copper, iron, magnesium, etc. to the soil so that the vegetables you eat will be more than just good eye-candy. Plants turn elemental minerals into minerals we can absorb and use. The best minerals are plant derived minerals.
@Hypergamous Wife WRONG...completely...sounds like you also believe you get useful minerals from tap water...lots of mis-info out there people. I 'am married to a Doctor with degrees in Nutrition & Food Science and is also a RD....Facts are Facts.
@@zevonp4907 - That's a good question for your garden store. They have the traditional NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium), which is about all that farmers put in their soils. Miracle Grow contains these minerals in varying quantities. This is the eye-candy that turns cardboard quality vegetables into picturesque beauty queens. But there are the other minerals that you can add to the soil to bring them up to speed. Don't ignore iodine if you live in the midwest. Soils on the coasts of oceans are loaded with ocean spray and, therefore, contain good amounts of iodine but by the time the winds get to the heartland, they aren't carrying much (if any) iodine.
@@GizmoFromPizmo I'm in Florida, so I guess I don't need to worry about iodine thing. But yeah, thanks, I'll check that out. I don't know if I want to use Miracle Gro because, I assume it's not 'organic'? But after looking into it a bit more, I think I can use bone and blood meal and that should cover the nitrogen and phosphorus at least.
@@GizmoFromPizmo I grew up a farm girl in west central Illinois. Dad used a manure spreader from our cows and probably from our chicken coup when we had chickens. A good soil tester. Could give you the info you need to see what's in your soil. Especially if you live in a new home or new community because new homes usually have soil brought in from different places. In Illinois where the soil is so rich with nutrients. We could grow almost anything. It's a bit different in Kansas. The first time I used espoma and opened the bag, it smelled just like what my dad used many years ago. Even tho it's much more expensive than miracle grow, I used it this year. But you can never, ever go wrong brining in some good manure dirt from a farm. It lasts several years. The tomatoes, onions, and everything else was amazing. Huge and amazing.
Had my husband do that a while ago. Onions peppers and Tom's are great companion plants. I ha e been gardening since I was a kid with my mamaw. She taught me organic gardening. And so happy she did. I'm in my late sixties so I've been at it for many years. This fella gardener has it right on.
I'm 70 yrs old because of my disabilities I can't prepare a place to have a garden I wish there were p4ople who would help seniors have a small garden here in East Tennessee I would love to watch a sm garden as well as enjoy eating out of it
Containers! You can grow almost anything in them and they come tall enough you won't have to bend so far. Fill the very bottom with Styrofoam and they will be light so you can move them and not use so much soil.
An aha moment I had with onions this year was that onions need that green leaf growth before they reach their bulbing day length. The leaf growth is the factor in how big the bulbs get…..the carbohydrates are pulled from the green stems and transfer the energy to the bulbs. I never had an issue getting nice green onions, but did have trouble getting the nice bulbs. Got them out earlier this year and am getting nice bulbs going now. Happy day from Carteret County NC!
Strong nitrogen fertilizers when they're young to get them growing quickly is definitely beneficial. I planted them alongside fish emulsion and 24-8-16 to get them going like a rocket. After the greens got very thick, I tapered off the fertilizers and mostly relied on the 5-5-5 granules that had been decomposing for months. I just tossed a few handfuls here and there throughout the season.
I have always failed at onion seeds. However, have been watching your channel and others. I do not recall what sort of fertilizer I put in the soil months ago. Seems like I have green "leaves", and small little globes. When do I change to no nitrogen, but phosphorus? When the green thickens up? So I might have a few weeks yet. I have been using fish emulsion, and every few weeks the 24-8-16. Perhaps will need to start adding phosphorus since I am sure I had not put much for granular phosphorus in before planting. Thank you.
If you found this video helpful, please "Like" and share to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching 😊TIMESTAMPS for convenience: 0:00 Introduction To Growing Giant Onions 1:18 Onion Plants In My Control Group 2:05 High Performance Onion Bulbs 3:22 Tip #1: Companion Planting Onions 4:42 Tip #2: Fertilizing Onions For Optimal Results 7:33 Tip #3: Drip Irrigation And Drip Line 9:30 Other Onion Tips And Make A Difference 10:26 Onion Harvest! Look At This Big Onion! 11:10 Don't Make This Mistake Growing Onions! 12:43 Adventures With Dale
I'm trying to plant slowly as I kill almost everything. Just had to harvest a sweet onion because I read if it flowers it's "ready" but the onion was so small. It smelled ready but was slightly bigger than golf ball. Hoping the rest do better.
The tip 1 and 2 are kind of similar. I guess the companion planting robs the bed of excessive nitrogen later in the season as the big tomatoes or peppers foliage uses it up. . I've got 2 questions though: lets say its tomatoes planted with onions. Do you put them around the same time, or when the tomato plants are already well established? Also: how do you change fertilizing regiment for onions without altering it for the companion plant? Will tomatoes or peppers be happy with "backing of entirely" from fertilizing even when fruiting?
I have been growing for years and I have been viewed numerous channels. YOU are by far the most informative individual I have viewed to date. You are very clear and precise with your information and skip all of that ridiculous"fluff" .
Thanks. I have 2 beds planted with sets. Most went to seed. I have several r spots planted singly with starts. Next year I'll intermingle with peppers, etc. I'm in Oregon so it's long day here. I'm 82 and have gardened 20 years. Still learning.
After 12 years of gardening, I finally have a great grasp on the nutritional needs of all of the plants I grow. Last year was the first year I switched from all purpose fertilizer (10-10-10) to using different fertilizers at different times for different plants (I've added other things too such as azomite, dried kelp, compost tea, mycorrhiza, etc.). My root veggies did much better than usual last year due to switching from higher nitrogen early on to higher phosphorus when their tops are nicely formed and need more energy directed towards their roots. I still like to watch a "how-to" video every year for each plant I grow to keep learning, and my takeaway here was companion planting the onions and other alliums with nightshades- thank you!
So thankful we found you esp. since your teachings are for our area. You are truly an excellent teacher. Also, I like the way you show from start to finish.
Another good tip is to remove the dirt from around the top of the bulb once they are established good. I learned that tip from Hollis and Nancy's channel. As soon as I did that I started having success.
I plant mine pretty shallow. I haven't moved any of the dirt away, and you can clearly see 40% of the bulb. Maybe you're planting the starts too deeply?
I made a mistake with straw mulch. I now use a different mulch and much less of it so that the bulbs get sunlight all the time. I wish onion seed packets would indicate whether they are short, intermediate of long day onions. Greetings from S. Portugal.
Back in the early sixty's UK. I entered my onions in the local flower show. expecting first prize. but they were disqualified. The judge wrights on the ticket. To Large for culinary use, the onions that won were all sizes and small. also this man won every year with his Onions. my Onions all weighed about 6lbs each. grown from seed and planted on boxing day. the seed was called Kelso. 8 of us in the family so not to big for us. the Judge was Biased. I found soda and sugar a good feed.
I love the idea of companion planting.... BUT I have to say that the huge onion bulbs are the result of the 20-20-20 fertilizer... That is the biggest difference.. I have seen this before... onions are very heavy feeders... next year try planting an onion only bed and feed it heavily with the 20-20-20... you will see the difference. Love your videos and all the wonderful information and of course , everyone loves Dale!!
Onions are heavy feeders, but I don't think one or two additional feedings are going to make that big of a difference, especially with the peppers sucking up much of the nutrients. Keep in mind I still did feed the other beds. They just didn't get as much water, since I run the drip irrigation for the peppers more often. I think water has a lot to do with it, since an onion is, what, 75-80% water?
Fantastic video. I saved the tops of my store bought onions and planted them last year. This year they are seeding and I watched your video on onion seeds. You are a great help to us wanna-be growers. Thank you for what you are doing!
Thank you so much! I have tried for several years with no success 0:06 to grow bulbing onions. After watching your videos, I sent away for sweet red and white onion starts. I also planted bell peppers and marigolds in the beds with them. My partner installed a drip irrigation system. The results were fantastic! We have harvested beautiful onions and have them drying in our shed now. Thank you so much for the valuable information that you shared here! Understanding this has made all the difference! ❤
Perfect timing! I'll be planting my onions out very soon. I was thinking of interplanting with tomatoes but now I'll add some with my peppers as well. Thanks for this very informative video!!
You're welcome! The onions do great next to peppers and tomatoes. Just make sure you give them adequate space. I have 18 inch spacing between my rows, and I plant my onions in the center of the space, so I have 9 inches on either side of the onions.
I have always planted onions as companion plants, especially with my peppers. I did it a a space saving method, it is nice to know there are other benefits as well. Thanks for sharing
Alliums and nightshades to great together! You can interplant garlic, onions, shallots and leeks with your tomatoes, peppers and eggplant and they make excellent space-saving companions.
I love your videos. You do a fantastic job conveying a ton of information in a clear, straightforward way. My onions are terrible this year. But now I am armed with all sorts of knowledge for next year. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your tips and sharing your experience! I'm so grateful as a novice planter to have advice from a grower with so many observations + trial & error
This is so interesting. I planted onions along the perimeter of all my raised beds. The ones with the peppers and tomatoes are massive. The others look so sad!
I'm in zone 8b so I have to overwinter my onions which doesn't allow companion planting with peppers or tomatoes or much of anything really but I give my onions high nitrogen fertilizer all the way until they start bulbing. I never feed them anything else. The leaves are what creates your bulb. You want all the veg you can get
Your videos have helped me so much, I watch each video more than once. Your attention to things that new gardeners need to know in order to be successful is much appreciated.
Great advice. Much I knew, much I did not, especially the 'correct variety for length of day'. Your presentation and production efforts are appreciated. Top notch there as well!
Hi from Australia, I have only started watching your videos, and I can't wait to see the rest! Thank you so much for the wonderful, practical, and very informative information. I haven not grown onions in years, and never in the subtropics. Use to grow them in a cool climate. I am looking forward to giving a go over our autumn - winter period.
I use the more recent onion greens as if they were spring onions. I cut off one or two for an omelet or soup. The large onion greens are as tasty and tender as spring onions or chives. It is great to see the results of companion planting so clearly. Thanks for an outstanding presentation.
It has taken me 4 years to prefect growing onions from seeds. This year I am growing my first seed from onions that I started from seeds last spring. I love having big onions but sometimes you need a small onions so it is nice to have a variety of sizes. My onions harvest makes me the proudest. Thanks for the info. I learned new things.
Outstanding video, beautiful garden, as an aging gen. Xer, I am very impressed with your expertise & ability to translate that to your viewers. I've been gardening since I was a kid in the late 70's, early 80's, only on rare occasions have I succeeded with growing large onions, kudos!
What a great job explaining your onion growing method. Last year I interplanted my onions and garlic together, and because I stopped watering them when the onions were ready to be pulled I felt my garlic suffered some. As soon as the onions were pulled I put the water back to the garlic for a couple of weeks. But we were up in the upper 90's by then. This year I think I'll intercrop the onions with peppers. Hopefully, with the peppers having a deeper root zone, they will not suffer while I'm harvesting onions. Thank you for the info!
Perfect timing. I harvested mine and they were pretty small. Granted, it was first time growing onions so I was proud of myself for even growing them. But now I want to know how to increase their size next time.
It's very interesting to see how a multiplicity of factors can impact on the growth of crops. Of course it is great to get big onions, but I grow a lot of onions and store them through the year. I find that the smaller ones store better, I find that sometimes I want a small onion and sometimes I want a big one, and also I am more interested in harvesting the most weight of product per square metre as opposed to harvesting fewer but larger onions, so I wonder about that as well. I would like to try growing some onions next to my tomatoes next year, so thanks for that suggestion. I use some fertilizer but I try to limit its use, and use an annual mulch with compost and manure to add nutrients to the soil. Here in the UK we get plenty of rain, so irrigation systems outside are not necessary.
Last year, I planted a white sugar onion plant and golf ball size is all the bigger I grew.. Need to fertilize better. Watered them all the time plus sat out in clear area for rain water 💧 I plant in large tubs containers
Last year I compared onion sets to seed starts for producing yellow bulb onions.. My onions (with a drip system) were absolutely huge.. at least 3x a big as the onion set onions. It was a huge reveal for me. I also let savory grow with the onions.. and they did very well.
Love watching you bc I’m not that far from you….I’m in 7B….. I want to try and find your video on planting onion seeds in the starter Trays……might be too late for me……..
You will never have big onions without soft / sandy soil , I grew the same onions at my home and at my Mother-n-Laws across the street , I grew hers in a in the ground on a raised bed that had soft easy to dig soil and I had a raised bed with compacted soil and her onions where 3 to 4 times bigger and received very little fertilizer / water maybe a quarter of what I applied and had less growing time to harvest, lesson learned !
I've heard mixed reviews on this. Some say even if you plant them closely, they just push each other apart. I put fairly even spacing of around 4-6 inches, so my spacing was fairly consistent. I make sure to allow 4-6" spacing, because a bulb will be about 3-5 inches.
@@TheMillennialGardener I don't think spacing has anything to do with it it's all about how soon you can get them in the ground how much fertilizer you give them and how much sunlight they get.
I recall an old gardener who grew great onions - but I see nobody finishing them like he did. He crushed down the tops in summer. I never asked him why - but I imagine it put the plant's last energy into the bulb, and probably started the process towards readying them for keeping.
That is exactly how my mom used to do them. Crush the tops. And the only fertilizer she used on the garden was cow manure. She paid a local farmer to spread manure over our one acre garden and till it in right before winter set in. In the spring, she would have him till it again with his tractor and she would use a hand cultivator to make her rows. We always had a very productive garden and we were doing it on red Oklahoma dirt.
@RonHelton another Oklahoman here. I'm a beginner to gardening. Do you have any suggestions or tips for which vegetables and plants are successful gardening in our Zone?
The method behind the madness is, If you give the onions a haircut, they grow thicker green tops. @RonHelton For each leafy spike on top, you get another onion ring, meaning larger onions.. 😊
You can tell how excited and proud he is that he figured out the Perfect combinations for growing these Beautiful Onions👏 I only wish I'da seen this a few weeks ago, I would've held off till the late fall to plant mine.
My second year with onions and finally had real success. Did seed/transplant against same variety mail order plants. Seed did way better. Lots of water and fertilizer. Water every day when hot and dry. But if they are in an area that floods they will fail completely. Strange. I was always skeptical of ringing but I tried it and saw a difference. I think it helped water get to the roots better and not the stress relief everyone thinks. Now I need to find the best varieties for my soil. Dramatic improvement year to year.
Nice onions and garden man…. I’ve been growing them in Toronto since I think 2013, surpassingly one of my favourite crops, plus early planting in our cold climate. I’ve also done best in loose soil, that is the only factor that’s worked for me with a complex fertilizer program, but I’ve always grown sets because of circumstances, although I’ve heard too seeds are better, cheers.
My grandfather loved onions. He grew yellow, white, red, and purple onions. He used onions as a defense to keep unwanted pests away from more succulent crops. Thanks for sharing.
One difference between the control bed and the inter-planted bed is that the control bed has no mulch. The peppers in the inter planted bed provide a cover crop mulching the onions. Onions need a mulch or a over crop in the early stages and into hot weather to conserve moisture in my experience. Nice video on onions.
I start our onions (Expression) from seed and we feed our onions here in East TN as you do. Next year however, we'll plant our onions on the opposite side of the drip irrigation, of the 90 paste tomato plants that we grow on cattle panels; about 200 ft worth. Thanks for the tip!
We plant Walla Walla sweet onions. They are so sweet that we pull them up, wash them and eat them like an apple. Once pulled out they don’t store for very long, so we dice them up and freeze them. They are sweeter than a TX sweet onions. We have found that if we leave them in the ground throughout the winter months, ( we average 4-5 feet of snow every winter) and harvest them the following year, they are sweeter.
Love growing Walla Walla onions. Plant 75 to 100 starts each year. Have found by drying them good after harvest, they can be stored in the refrigerator and will keep for a long period of time. We have just finished the last of last year's crop at the end of March. No idea how they compare to the sweet ones grown in the south.
@@jackgraham3393 The Texas sweet onions are sweet but the Walla Walla are by far the sweetest onions I’ve ever tasted. Yes they do last longer in the fridge but we grow enough vegetables to sustain us through the year. The extra veggies we cook and then freeze dry so later all we have to do is add water and heat. During the canning process, the food looses up to 60% of its nutrients, but when freeze dried it looses only 3% of its nutritional value. We also freeze dry our meat. Once food is freeze dried, and stored properly, it’ll last 25-30 years.
For those that don't know, southern onions should be planted in November because of mild winters and hot summer days. Most common way to plant is with sets, not bulbs or seeds.
Onion sets are not available in central Texas until mid January. 1015y sweet is most common. Am guessing suppliers know not to plant in the fall. Out last freeze here is about early March. Have complete loss with snow/ ice in February. How could they survive planting in November?
@@terryanderson4366 I planted my onions (Sapelo from Hoss) in November here in West Central GA and they are currently beautiful and bulbing. We had several hard freezes this past winter and my onions and soft neck garlic overwintered fine. Farmer Froberg (Texas) turned me on to Hoss (here in GA).
Useful information, where he actually tries something different, rather than repeating other people's ideas. This is a good summary of hours worth of research online.
The number of green stems on an onion means how many layers of onion in the plant. I cut my green stems & dice them to dry and use in my cooking for flavor and color. Like chives I can powder them also and use for flavor especially on a baked potato. The flavor is there for sure.
The bed with the peppers are bigger because there is growth companion for the tops and this bigger roots. Buy also pepper plants take a bigger dose of phosphorus. Phosphorus creates the root and fruit so they are also getting more phosphorus his anowagy is correct.
I’ve had big problems with carrot root fly, since last winter. I was thinking about growing those interplanted with my alliums to see if they keep the pests away. This video makes me determined to try out this combination, this year!
@@zdenkobiuk3517 Well, if you only have a small play area, nets will work. If you have enough onions, garlic, carrots for a year for a family, you need half a dozen nets and more. So a big nope!
My grandfather has been doing it this way for decades: Plant garlic & onions together with carrots. This keeps all kinds of pests away and they all grow better. Put some woodash (clean ash from untreated wood only) on top of your rows. Works like a charm. You can also improve your plants health with "nettle soup" or similar plant based "tonics"
I planted from seed for the first time. They are the best onions I have grown. They look a lot like yours. thanks for the tips. I mulched mine with leaf mulch.
They should do well for you. I don't think the extra 1.7 degrees latitude south will make that big of a difference. They really love it down here in Wilmington.
Just recently found your channel. Super impressed!! I am just getting back into it after a major life disaster of 5 years. I'm remembering more and more each day and learning even more with your channel. May not be able to do everything this year... but will log it and set reminders for next year. My best years 2015/16, produced approximately 2,000sq ft of produce in less than 700sq ft. This year, I am putting in a 240sq ft greenhouse
I can add it to the list. The good thing about onions are you can leave them in the ground for a little bit and harvest them over time, so keep that in mind. You don't necessarily have to pull them all at once.
Some beautiful onions! I'll exercise your suggestions. From your presentation I learned right away I've not been using enough plant food/soil food. Will up the levels next spring. I've been rapidly moving away from mono-cropping - just naturally happened. Simulating a meadow or forest is the way to go. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. It's lovely to know there are so many accomplished good gardeners in our community around the world. Cheers
I can tell you are so proud, and rightly so, of your onions. This is my 2nd year trying to grow them myself. Last year they were golf ball sized. This year my Vidalia's are greater than softball sized and I'm so proud. I do think the 20 20 20 extra feeding of your peppers contributed to their size. I have used some as they were growing and quite tasty, but they are huge and I am wondering if I should pull them up even though they are not yet bent at the neck at all? Wondering if I risk ground rot if I keep these monsters in the ground too long?
@@digsindirt4490 every 7-10 days. started with making row with 10-10-10 plus light sprinkle of 15-0-0, blood meal, bone meal a light sprinkle of espom salts bagged composed manure in the row under my landscape fabric. Then Miracle grow tomato alternated with Miracle grow general purpose plant food plus Fish emulsion diluted in 2 gal watering can to top feed. The onions are half under the landscape fabric and I will have to remove it to get them out of the ground in places because they are bigger than the hole they were planted in. At 10 weeks started spooning them which I did 3 times.
Really big onions don't store as well and typically aren't as tasty either. Instead of waiting for the necks to bend over on their own, bend them over by hand.
@@hanginlaundry360 When onions are about 10 weeks old you take a spoon and gradually remove the dirt from around the base of the onion, leaving the roots in the ground. I do this process 2-3 times while they are growing. It allows the bulbs to expand bigger by removing the dirt from around the growing bulb. I never heard of doing this either until I watched videos about it. Search you tube for spooning onions. It also has another name for doing this, i just can't remember it right now.
I have used buried 1/4 inch soaker hoses and am a big fan of automatic watering via soaker hose or drip line. You can attach a timer to the hose bib and set everything up so watering happens on a regular schedule for specific period of time. Well worth setting up and great if you are forgetful or lazy, like me!
@@TheMillennialGardener trust me kid it ain't the dog it's the garden skills you both possess. Now if I could just convince 🤔 James to make a tuck shirt in his merchandise??? Maybe you should put your pup on a Tshirt. My wife would buy several. Thanks again for sharing all you do in the garden! You are knocking it out of the park!
Thanks! I intend to follow up once the double and triple bulbs mature versus the singles. We'll see how they do. If they do just as well, I may consider that for next year. I must admit I greatly prefer the look of the single plantings, though.
Right, double/tripl bulb next to the peppers would be a good comparison test, Also a soil test pre planting to show the soil has similar ph, nutrients, ect. Peppers would shade the onions so kinda surprised they did grow better.
@@WeatherNut27, I believe he said he started the onions three(?) weeks ahead of the peppers. That, perhaps, would help explain their ability to grow taller than expected, even though they were more shaded by the peppers as time went on.
@johnbesharian9965 maybe but 3 weeks in beginning of season there's not that much growth but that may definitely have an affect. Nice catch. But still, being shady during most of growing season is still interesting
@@WeatherNut27, Well, what grows best under Shade Trees"? Shade loving plants, maybe some plants grow better after their first few weeks of full exposure to the sun and then are able to keep up with the other types of plants around them that may start at a faster rate than they do.
Thanks glad I looked for your advice was just wondering how to plant and fertilize and now I found out WHERE to plant them. Right by my tomatoes and peppers
I definitely agree with why you're onions are doing better with other plants. They are getting/sharing nutrients with other plants. Plus happy microbiology aswell. What kind of soil do you have in your beds plus what are the sizes?
I’m from Monroe NC transplanted to south central Texas. Still enjoy all garden programs from NC. Your info gives me ideas that work well with a little modifications for this area. Thanks
We have similar heat and dew points, so a lot of what does well here where I live will probably do well for you, too. You have the benefit of much drier summers - or a curse of drier summers, depending on how you look at it. I certainly envy your summers for figs!
Make sure you're planting the proper onion day-length type for your climate. You have to grow the proper day length for your location, which is a common problem. Long day onions for the north, intermediate day for the mid-latitudes and short-day onions for the south. I explain it in this video: ua-cam.com/video/1gKvOx5R39A/v-deo.html If you have the day-length type correct, then this video will help. These changes I made made a big difference. I strongly recommend growing onions from seed, not sets.
I plant garlic with my tomato and potato plants. I'm now thinking I should add onions too! Garlic and onion are what I use a LOT of for cooking! Yes I also have Merigolds and Zennia to bring in pollinators and confuse the (bad bugs).
I interplant garlic as well. The garlic gets interplanted with the indeterminates. The onions are in with the peppers, determinate tomatoes and dwarf tomatoes. Nightshades and alliums do GREAT together.
Marigold is poison to gophers, so they cause a ring of protection, can't remember how far. My chipmunks don't eat the garden, but they do a daily search for grubs, caterpillars and worms under the leaves. More likely to do a row of pots than a raised bed. My golden mantels can get through the wires for 2.5 weeks, they will harvest all the peas, then repeatedly shove themselves into the wire spaces in disbelief when too big.
This year, I interplanted my onions in the extra space between my immature hascap berry bushes. I haven't planted out my peppers yet and am hoping to do so this week after I install my drip irrigation system tomorrow. You've got me thinking that I should put some left over onion seedlings between the peppers as you did. Maybe the onions will keep away the pepper maggot fly that attacked my peppers last year. I garden in S. Ontario, Canada.
I knew there had to be somebody out there who could explain onions. Thank you so much. Now I know what was missing. Water and fertilizer. Looking forward to some good-sized onions in Canada. 🤗
Onions are one of the plants that absolutely LOVE water! It's almost as if you can't give them enough, if your beds are well drained. Got an idea for you, use a tennis ball as a comparison to show the size of your onions, everyone knows how big a tennis ball is. Also, I always plant my peppers and my tomatoes side by side. Pepper and tomatoes are both plant members of the Nightshade or Solanaceae, so they grow well together. Beautiful onions!! I have found that if you plant onion sets, you can have success with long day onions here in NC, a short day climate. Next year, I'm gonna try walla walla onions, a large very sweet variety that is a long day onion. I will try the onions and peppers in the same bed next spring, thanks!!
One of the things we've learned about industrialized farming is that they look great but are nutritionally pretty shallow. Always remember to add plenty of copper, iron, magnesium, etc. to the soil so that the vegetables you eat will be more than just good eye-candy. Plants turn elemental minerals into minerals we can absorb and use. The best minerals are plant derived minerals.
@Hypergamous Wife WRONG...completely...sounds like you also believe you get useful minerals from tap water...lots of mis-info out there people. I 'am married to a Doctor with degrees in Nutrition & Food Science and is also a RD....Facts are Facts.
How do you add these things to the soil? I'm trying to start a brand new garden right now, and I literally have NO IDEA what I'm doing.
@@zevonp4907 - That's a good question for your garden store. They have the traditional NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium), which is about all that farmers put in their soils. Miracle Grow contains these minerals in varying quantities. This is the eye-candy that turns cardboard quality vegetables into picturesque beauty queens. But there are the other minerals that you can add to the soil to bring them up to speed. Don't ignore iodine if you live in the midwest. Soils on the coasts of oceans are loaded with ocean spray and, therefore, contain good amounts of iodine but by the time the winds get to the heartland, they aren't carrying much (if any) iodine.
@@GizmoFromPizmo I'm in Florida, so I guess I don't need to worry about iodine thing. But yeah, thanks, I'll check that out. I don't know if I want to use Miracle Gro because, I assume it's not 'organic'? But after looking into it a bit more, I think I can use bone and blood meal and that should cover the nitrogen and phosphorus at least.
@@GizmoFromPizmo I grew up a farm girl in west central Illinois. Dad used a manure spreader from our cows and probably from our chicken coup when we had chickens. A good soil tester. Could give you the info you need to see what's in your soil. Especially if you live in a new home or new community because new homes usually have soil brought in from different places. In Illinois where the soil is so rich with
nutrients. We could grow almost anything. It's a bit different in Kansas.
The first time I used espoma and opened the bag, it smelled just like what my dad used many years ago. Even tho it's much more expensive than miracle grow, I used it this year. But you can never, ever go wrong brining in some good manure dirt from a farm. It lasts several years. The tomatoes, onions, and everything else was amazing. Huge and amazing.
Lucky Dale! He gets his own blanket and umbrella to enjoy the afternoon relaxing on the beach 🐶.
Had my husband do that a while ago. Onions peppers and Tom's are great companion plants. I ha e been gardening since I was a kid with my mamaw. She taught me organic gardening. And so happy she did. I'm in my late sixties so I've been at it for many years. This fella gardener has it right on.
That's excellent
Love it! 😎
I'm 70 yrs old because of my disabilities I can't prepare a place to have a garden I wish there were p4ople who would help seniors have a small garden here in East Tennessee I would love to watch a sm garden as well as enjoy eating out of it
Think about growing in 5 gallon buckets. They are easy to move and maintain.
Containers! You can grow almost anything in them and they come tall enough you won't have to bend so far. Fill the very bottom with Styrofoam and they will be light so you can move them and not use so much soil.
Grow root cuttings in water in your house, change the water, and clean the glass containers every week.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for your support and generosity! I really appreciate it ❤
An aha moment I had with onions this year was that onions need that green leaf growth before they reach their bulbing day length. The leaf growth is the factor in how big the bulbs get…..the carbohydrates are pulled from the green stems and transfer the energy to the bulbs. I never had an issue getting nice green onions, but did have trouble getting the nice bulbs. Got them out earlier this year and am getting nice bulbs going now.
Happy day from Carteret County NC!
Strong nitrogen fertilizers when they're young to get them growing quickly is definitely beneficial. I planted them alongside fish emulsion and 24-8-16 to get them going like a rocket. After the greens got very thick, I tapered off the fertilizers and mostly relied on the 5-5-5 granules that had been decomposing for months. I just tossed a few handfuls here and there throughout the season.
Each greenstock correlates to one ring on the onion Carteret County rocks
I have always failed at onion seeds. However, have been watching your channel and others. I do not recall what sort of fertilizer I put in the soil months ago. Seems like I have green "leaves", and small little globes. When do I change to no nitrogen, but phosphorus? When the green thickens up? So I might have a few weeks yet. I have been using fish emulsion, and every few weeks the 24-8-16. Perhaps will need to start adding phosphorus since I am sure I had not put much for granular phosphorus in before planting. Thank you.
Thanks for that tip!!!
If you found this video helpful, please "Like" and share to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching 😊TIMESTAMPS for convenience:
0:00 Introduction To Growing Giant Onions
1:18 Onion Plants In My Control Group
2:05 High Performance Onion Bulbs
3:22 Tip #1: Companion Planting Onions
4:42 Tip #2: Fertilizing Onions For Optimal Results
7:33 Tip #3: Drip Irrigation And Drip Line
9:30 Other Onion Tips And Make A Difference
10:26 Onion Harvest! Look At This Big Onion!
11:10 Don't Make This Mistake Growing Onions!
12:43 Adventures With Dale
You have a click bait logo
⁉️🎣 let's go to NC! I wanna meet Mr.Dale❣️
I'm trying to plant slowly as I kill almost everything. Just had to harvest a sweet onion because I read if it flowers it's "ready" but the onion was so small. It smelled ready but was slightly bigger than golf ball. Hoping the rest do better.
Onions and bell peppers, my 2 favorite food groups.
The tip 1 and 2 are kind of similar. I guess the companion planting robs the bed of excessive nitrogen later in the season as the big tomatoes or peppers foliage uses it up. . I've got 2 questions though: lets say its tomatoes planted with onions. Do you put them around the same time, or when the tomato plants are already well established? Also: how do you change fertilizing regiment for onions without altering it for the companion plant? Will tomatoes or peppers be happy with "backing of entirely" from fertilizing even when fruiting?
I have been growing for years and I have been viewed numerous channels. YOU are by far the most informative individual I have viewed to date. You are very clear and precise with your information and skip all of that ridiculous"fluff" .
Thank you! I really appreciate that.
Thanks. I have 2 beds planted with sets. Most went to seed. I have several
r spots planted singly with starts. Next year I'll intermingle with peppers, etc. I'm in Oregon so it's long day here. I'm 82 and have gardened 20 years. Still learning.
Watched first 2 minutes and subbed, your channel is brilliant, clear and concise, fast and to the point
After 12 years of gardening, I finally have a great grasp on the nutritional needs of all of the plants I grow. Last year was the first year I switched from all purpose fertilizer (10-10-10) to using different fertilizers at different times for different plants (I've added other things too such as azomite, dried kelp, compost tea, mycorrhiza, etc.). My root veggies did much better than usual last year due to switching from higher nitrogen early on to higher phosphorus when their tops are nicely formed and need more energy directed towards their roots. I still like to watch a "how-to" video every year for each plant I grow to keep learning, and my takeaway here was companion planting the onions and other alliums with nightshades- thank you!
Care to share what you do and what an when you use. That's for your help 👍
👍
I just use grass fertilizer on all my plants , everything grows huge
So thankful we found you esp. since your teachings are for our area. You are truly an excellent teacher. Also, I like the way you show from start to finish.
The best video I've seen on growing onions.
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!
Another good tip is to remove the dirt from around the top of the bulb once they are established good. I learned that tip from Hollis and Nancy's channel. As soon as I did that I started having success.
I plant mine pretty shallow. I haven't moved any of the dirt away, and you can clearly see 40% of the bulb. Maybe you're planting the starts too deeply?
yes thats called spooning.
Thank you for this tip. Spooning is new to me.
@@TheMillennialGardener That and depends how compacted the soil is around the onions I think. I imagine your raised bed custom soil is pretty loose.
I made a mistake with straw mulch. I now use a different mulch and much less of it so that the bulbs get sunlight all the time. I wish onion seed packets would indicate whether they are short, intermediate of long day onions. Greetings from S. Portugal.
Back in the early sixty's UK. I entered my onions in the local flower show. expecting first prize. but they were disqualified. The judge wrights on the ticket. To Large for culinary use, the onions that won were all sizes and small. also this man won every year with his Onions. my Onions all weighed about 6lbs each. grown from seed and planted on boxing day. the seed was called Kelso. 8 of us in the family so not to big for us. the Judge was Biased. I found soda and sugar a good feed.
I love the idea of companion planting.... BUT I have to say that the huge onion bulbs are the result of the 20-20-20 fertilizer... That is the biggest difference.. I have seen this before... onions are very heavy feeders... next year try planting an onion only bed and feed it heavily with the 20-20-20... you will see the difference. Love your videos and all the wonderful information and of course , everyone loves Dale!!
Onions are heavy feeders, but I don't think one or two additional feedings are going to make that big of a difference, especially with the peppers sucking up much of the nutrients. Keep in mind I still did feed the other beds. They just didn't get as much water, since I run the drip irrigation for the peppers more often. I think water has a lot to do with it, since an onion is, what, 75-80% water?
@@TheMillennialGardener l
i think it is likely at least both factors, but wondering why you use both OG and petro ferts?@@TheMillennialGardener
I've never thought about gardening, but I enjoy his passion for what he does.
Fantastic video. I saved the tops of my store bought onions and planted them last year. This year they are seeding and I watched your video on onion seeds. You are a great help to us wanna-be growers. Thank you for what you are doing!
Thank you so much! I have tried for several years with no success 0:06 to grow bulbing onions. After watching your videos, I sent away for sweet red and white onion starts. I also planted bell peppers and marigolds in the beds with them. My partner installed a drip irrigation system. The results were fantastic! We have harvested beautiful onions and have them drying in our shed now. Thank you so much for the valuable information that you shared here! Understanding this has made all the difference! ❤
🙏Oh, my what a great gardener you are!!!thanks for all the tips!!🌈
Perfect timing! I'll be planting my onions out very soon. I was thinking of interplanting with tomatoes but now I'll add some with my peppers as well. Thanks for this very informative video!!
I plant onion too
You're welcome! The onions do great next to peppers and tomatoes. Just make sure you give them adequate space. I have 18 inch spacing between my rows, and I plant my onions in the center of the space, so I have 9 inches on either side of the onions.
@@TheMillennialGardener Does the same apply to 🧄 GARLIC 🧄⁉️
@@TheMillennialGardener I'm a new sub to your channel thanks for the onion, tomato pepper tips. I'm excited to get started on my garden journey.
@@brehpotsirhc i don't know your growing zone, but most garlic is planted in/around October and harvested the next july.
Thanks for showing the correct methods of growing onions
I have always planted onions as companion plants, especially with my peppers. I did it a a space saving method, it is nice to know there are other benefits as well. Thanks for sharing
Alliums and nightshades to great together! You can interplant garlic, onions, shallots and leeks with your tomatoes, peppers and eggplant and they make excellent space-saving companions.
Thank voor The uien plant
I love your videos. You do a fantastic job conveying a ton of information in a clear, straightforward way. My onions are terrible this year. But now I am armed with all sorts of knowledge for next year. Thank you!
What state are you in? I am in Wi and am hoping to get large onions. Last year.....smaller ones.
im seventy ninenine and as a child i helped my grandma spoon the onions and brade them. things have changed so much as the years go by
Col.Ga.
I never have luck with my onions. They always get attacked by onions maggots no matter what I do. 😭
ty...read about companion planting years ago and it has not changed.
Thanks for watching!
Thank you so much for your tips and sharing your experience! I'm so grateful as a novice planter to have advice from a grower with so many observations + trial & error
This is so interesting. I planted onions along the perimeter of all my raised beds. The ones with the peppers and tomatoes are massive. The others look so sad!
You are so thorough and I can tell you love gardening.
I'm in zone 8b so I have to overwinter my onions which doesn't allow companion planting with peppers or tomatoes or much of anything really but I give my onions high nitrogen fertilizer all the way until they start bulbing. I never feed them anything else. The leaves are what creates your bulb. You want all the veg you can get
you need to research how to overwinter peppers , they are biannual
Your videos have helped me so much, I watch each video more than once. Your attention to things that new gardeners need to know in order to be successful is much appreciated.
I'm so happy to hear that! I hope they're helping increase your success!
Ollas would do the same as a drip line, giving constant water, as needed...love the advice on fertilizer timing. It makes so much sense! Beautiful !
Great advice. Much I knew, much I did not, especially the 'correct variety for length of day'. Your presentation and production efforts are appreciated. Top notch there as well!
I followed you and have learned great tips for plants. I like companion plants . It's helpful in any season. Thank you very much. Blessing all!
Not only does it look good, but it helps resist pests and maximizes yields! Thank you for watching!
Your tips are easier to follow than anyone else I watch,thank you so much.
Thank you! I try hard to streamline things and keep it simple in chapter-form.
Hi from Australia, I have only started watching your videos, and I can't wait to see the rest! Thank you so much for the wonderful, practical, and very informative information. I haven not grown onions in years, and never in the subtropics. Use to grow them in a cool climate. I am looking forward to giving a go over our autumn - winter period.
Well blooming onions ! 🧅 Yum !
I use the more recent onion greens as if they were spring onions. I cut off one or two for an omelet or soup. The large onion greens are as tasty and tender as spring onions or chives. It is great to see the results of companion planting so clearly. Thanks for an outstanding presentation.
It has taken me 4 years to prefect growing onions from seeds. This year I am growing my first seed from onions that I started from seeds last spring. I love having big onions but sometimes you need a small onions so it is nice to have a variety of sizes. My onions harvest makes me the proudest. Thanks for the info. I learned new things.
Outstanding video, beautiful garden, as an aging gen. Xer, I am very impressed with your expertise & ability to translate that to your viewers.
I've been gardening since I was a kid in the late 70's, early 80's, only on rare occasions have I succeeded with growing large onions, kudos!
try Kelso seed. plant on boxing day in pots. Kelso is in Scotland. look it up for the address UK.
First time for onions here in my zone 6b. Thank you. Dale seems well behaved. Great guys.
What a great job explaining your onion growing method. Last year I interplanted my onions and garlic together, and because I stopped watering them when the onions were ready to be pulled I felt my garlic suffered some. As soon as the onions were pulled I put the water back to the garlic for a couple of weeks. But we were up in the upper 90's by then. This year I think I'll intercrop the onions with peppers. Hopefully, with the peppers having a deeper root zone, they will not suffer while I'm harvesting onions. Thank you for the info!
Awesome video... just awesome
Thank you!
Perfect timing. I harvested mine and they were pretty small. Granted, it was first time growing onions so I was proud of myself for even growing them. But now I want to know how to increase their size next time.
These tips should help. As always, make sure you're growing the correct day-type onion for your latitude, too.
It's still early enough to try for your "Next Time"
To Be NOW!!
Great video . Fantastic advice just subscribed thanks from Jeogla NSW Australia 😊
Glad I could help! Thanks for subscribing!
It's very interesting to see how a multiplicity of factors can impact on the growth of crops. Of course it is great to get big onions, but I grow a lot of onions and store them through the year. I find that the smaller ones store better, I find that sometimes I want a small onion and sometimes I want a big one, and also I am more interested in harvesting the most weight of product per square metre as opposed to harvesting fewer but larger onions, so I wonder about that as well. I would like to try growing some onions next to my tomatoes next year, so thanks for that suggestion. I use some fertilizer but I try to limit its use, and use an annual mulch with compost and manure to add nutrients to the soil. Here in the UK we get plenty of rain, so irrigation systems outside are not necessary.
I haven’t ever grown any large ones, just a bit larger than a golf ball. One thing I noted is if they don’t get enough water they will be super hot.
Yes, I wish mine were smaller for sure! I think it is the variety of onion you plant that may make a big difference in the size.
Last year, I planted a white sugar onion plant and golf ball size is all the bigger I grew.. Need to fertilize better. Watered them all the time plus sat out in clear area for rain water 💧 I plant in large tubs containers
Best gardening channel out there …thank you
Last year I compared onion sets to seed starts for producing yellow bulb onions.. My onions (with a drip system) were absolutely huge.. at least 3x a big as the onion set onions. It was a huge reveal for me. I also let savory grow with the onions.. and they did very well.
Love watching you bc I’m not that far from you….I’m in 7B….. I want to try and find your video on planting onion seeds in the starter Trays……might be too late for me……..
Wow 🤩 beautiful onions 🧅 and I love the end of your videos with an update of your handsome boy Dale 🐕 💙
Thank you! Dale is the star of the show. He always gets his own feature 🐕
Glad I found this channel, I’m in central N. Carolina and starting my first raised beds, better late than never, thanks for the help and God bless!
You will never have big onions without soft / sandy soil , I grew the same onions at my home and at my Mother-n-Laws across the street , I grew hers in a in the ground on a raised bed that had soft easy to dig soil and I had a raised bed with compacted soil and her onions where 3 to 4 times bigger and received very little fertilizer / water maybe a quarter of what I applied and had less growing time to harvest, lesson learned !
Great commonsense info and instruction!!
The main reason for small onions vs. large onion results is spacing. I plant them 6" apart and they do very well along with the rest of your tips.
I've heard mixed reviews on this. Some say even if you plant them closely, they just push each other apart. I put fairly even spacing of around 4-6 inches, so my spacing was fairly consistent. I make sure to allow 4-6" spacing, because a bulb will be about 3-5 inches.
@@TheMillennialGardener I don't think spacing has anything to do with it it's all about how soon you can get them in the ground how much fertilizer you give them and how much sunlight they get.
Lots of great info. Thank you.
@@kansasgardener5844 & water 💦
@@TheMillennialGardener can you eat the onion tops like green onions?
Thank you I realy dream of planting my own onions in my own garden
They're wonderful! I hope you plant some.
I recall an old gardener who grew great onions - but I see nobody finishing them like he did. He crushed down the tops in summer. I never asked him why - but I imagine it put the plant's last energy into the bulb, and probably started the process towards readying them for keeping.
That is exactly how my mom used to do them. Crush the tops. And the only fertilizer she used on the garden was cow manure. She paid a local farmer to spread manure over our one acre garden and till it in right before winter set in. In the spring, she would have him till it again with his tractor and she would use a hand cultivator to make her rows. We always had a very productive garden and we were doing it on red Oklahoma dirt.
@RonHelton another Oklahoman here. I'm a beginner to gardening. Do you have any suggestions or tips for which vegetables and plants are successful gardening in our Zone?
The method behind the madness is, If you give the onions a haircut, they grow thicker green tops. @RonHelton For each leafy spike on top, you get another onion ring, meaning larger onions.. 😊
You can tell how excited and proud he is that he figured out the Perfect combinations for growing these Beautiful Onions👏 I only wish I'da seen this a few weeks ago, I would've held off till the late fall to plant mine.
My second year with onions and finally had real success. Did seed/transplant against same variety mail order plants. Seed did way better. Lots of water and fertilizer. Water every day when hot and dry. But if they are in an area that floods they will fail completely. Strange. I was always skeptical of ringing but I tried it and saw a difference. I think it helped water get to the roots better and not the stress relief everyone thinks. Now I need to find the best varieties for my soil. Dramatic improvement year to year.
Thanx for helping me I really appreciate
You're welcome! Thanks for watching!
Great video, good information! USA Oklahoma
Nice onions and garden man…. I’ve been growing them in Toronto since I think 2013, surpassingly one of my favourite crops, plus early planting in our cold climate. I’ve also done best in loose soil, that is the only factor that’s worked for me with a complex fertilizer program, but I’ve always grown sets because of circumstances, although I’ve heard too seeds are better, cheers.
My grandfather loved onions. He grew yellow, white, red, and purple onions. He used onions as a defense to keep unwanted pests away from more succulent crops. Thanks for sharing.
As someone who HATES onions, I don't know why I'm watching this.
Onions are cooked in food dishes in every restaurant.
Bahahahaha
Your missing out. I love onions.
Thanks for all the good info, you have a beautiful garden.
Thanks you! I appreciate that.
One difference between the control bed and the inter-planted bed is that the control bed has no mulch. The peppers in the inter planted bed provide a cover crop mulching the onions. Onions need a mulch or a over crop in the early stages and into hot weather to conserve moisture in my experience. Nice video on onions.
Good observation.
I start our onions (Expression) from seed and we feed our onions here in East TN as you do. Next year however, we'll plant our onions on the opposite side of the drip irrigation, of the 90 paste tomato plants that we grow on cattle panels; about 200 ft worth. Thanks for the tip!
We plant Walla Walla sweet onions.
They are so sweet that we pull them up, wash them and eat them like an apple.
Once pulled out they don’t store for very long, so we dice them up and freeze them.
They are sweeter than a TX sweet onions.
We have found that if we leave them in the ground throughout the winter months, ( we average 4-5 feet of snow every winter) and harvest them the following year, they are sweeter.
Are Walla Walla onions similar to Vidalia's?
@@TheCrystalice4 That I don’t know.
Their sweeter than Texas Sweets
Love growing Walla Walla onions. Plant 75 to 100 starts each year. Have found by drying them good after harvest, they can be stored in the refrigerator and will keep for a long period of time. We have just finished the last of last year's crop at the end of March. No idea how they compare to the sweet ones grown in the south.
@@jackgraham3393 The Texas sweet onions are sweet but the Walla Walla are by far the sweetest onions I’ve ever tasted.
Yes they do last longer in the fridge but we grow enough vegetables to sustain us through the year.
The extra veggies we cook and then freeze dry so later all we have to do is add water and heat.
During the canning process, the food looses up to 60% of its nutrients, but when freeze dried it looses only 3% of its nutritional value.
We also freeze dry our meat.
Once food is freeze dried, and stored properly, it’ll last 25-30 years.
@@Doc1855You don't lose 60 percent of nutrients during canning.
Thanks for sharing the info about growing larger onions . Will try this method and see if we can get better results too
For those that don't know, southern onions should be planted in November because of mild winters and hot summer days. Most common way to plant is with sets, not bulbs or seeds.
short day onions for the south, long day for the north.
Onion sets are not available in central Texas until mid January. 1015y sweet is most common. Am guessing suppliers know not to plant in the fall. Out last freeze here is about early March. Have complete loss with snow/ ice in February. How could they survive planting in November?
@@terryanderson4366 I planted my onions (Sapelo from Hoss) in November here in West Central GA and they are currently beautiful and bulbing. We had several hard freezes this past winter and my onions and soft neck garlic overwintered fine. Farmer Froberg (Texas) turned me on to Hoss (here in GA).
Useful information, where he actually tries something different, rather than repeating other people's ideas. This is a good summary of hours worth of research online.
I'm glad it was helpful! Most of my videos are based on my own experimentation, so ideas rarely overlap unless they're universal truths.
The number of green stems on an onion means how many layers of onion in the plant. I cut my green stems & dice them to dry and use in my cooking for flavor and color. Like chives I can powder them also and use for flavor especially on a baked potato. The flavor is there for sure.
Do I cut back the flowers from my onions and garlic to let them continue growing and multiplying in my garden bed? 😮 thx
Definitely going to use this education on my onions!
Your garden looks amazing! Thank you for sharing the great information on onions😊👍
Thank you! Every year, it gets a little better. Gardens age like wine as long as they're maintained!
This onion video was SO helpful! Thank you for all the details
Onion, tomatoes and peppers are the perfect marriage to birth delicious salsa.
The bed with the peppers are bigger because there is growth companion for the tops and this bigger roots. Buy also pepper plants take a bigger dose of phosphorus. Phosphorus creates the root and fruit so they are also getting more phosphorus his anowagy is correct.
I’ve had big problems with carrot root fly, since last winter. I was thinking about growing those interplanted with my alliums to see if they keep the pests away. This video makes me determined to try out this combination, this year!
My suggestion is to buy garden net for small areas for this fly. That is how I resolve a problem.
@@zdenkobiuk3517 Well, if you only have a small play area, nets will work. If you have enough onions, garlic, carrots for a year for a family, you need half a dozen nets and more. So a big nope!
My grandfather has been doing it this way for decades: Plant garlic & onions together with carrots. This keeps all kinds of pests away and they all grow better.
Put some woodash (clean ash from untreated wood only) on top of your rows. Works like a charm. You can also improve your plants health with "nettle soup" or similar plant based "tonics"
I planted from seed for the first time. They are the best onions I have grown. They look a lot like yours. thanks for the tips. I mulched mine with leaf mulch.
I’m growing the same variety here in Raleigh zone 7b. I hope mine are as beautiful as yours. Great tips!
They should do well for you. I don't think the extra 1.7 degrees latitude south will make that big of a difference. They really love it down here in Wilmington.
Just recently found your channel.
Super impressed!!
I am just getting back into it after a major life disaster of 5 years.
I'm remembering more and more each day and learning even more with your channel.
May not be able to do everything this year... but will log it and set reminders for next year.
My best years 2015/16, produced approximately 2,000sq ft of produce in less than 700sq ft.
This year, I am putting in a 240sq ft greenhouse
Great Job !
Can you do a video on curing onions for storage ?
I can add it to the list. The good thing about onions are you can leave them in the ground for a little bit and harvest them over time, so keep that in mind. You don't necessarily have to pull them all at once.
Some beautiful onions! I'll exercise your suggestions. From your presentation I learned right away I've not been using enough plant food/soil food. Will up the levels next spring. I've been rapidly moving away from mono-cropping - just naturally happened. Simulating a meadow or forest is the way to go. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. It's lovely to know there are so many accomplished good gardeners in our community around the world. Cheers
I can tell you are so proud, and rightly so, of your onions. This is my 2nd year trying to grow them myself. Last year they were golf ball sized. This year my Vidalia's are greater than softball sized and I'm so proud. I do think the 20 20 20 extra feeding of your peppers contributed to their size. I have used some as they were growing and quite tasty, but they are huge and I am wondering if I should pull them up even though they are not yet bent at the neck at all? Wondering if I risk ground rot if I keep these monsters in the ground too long?
Did you fertilize them on a particular schedule (weekly, monthly, etc)?
@@digsindirt4490 every 7-10 days. started with making row with 10-10-10 plus light sprinkle of 15-0-0, blood meal, bone meal a light sprinkle of espom salts bagged composed manure in the row under my landscape fabric. Then Miracle grow tomato alternated with Miracle grow general purpose plant food plus Fish emulsion diluted in 2 gal watering can to top feed. The onions are half under the landscape fabric and I will have to remove it to get them out of the ground in places because they are bigger than the hole they were planted in. At 10 weeks started spooning them which I did 3 times.
@@imaspacewoman What's spooning? Thx
Really big onions don't store as well and typically aren't as tasty either. Instead of waiting for the necks to bend over on their own, bend them over by hand.
@@hanginlaundry360 When onions are about 10 weeks old you take a spoon and gradually remove the dirt from around the base of the onion, leaving the roots in the ground. I do this process 2-3 times while they are growing. It allows the bulbs to expand bigger by removing the dirt from around the growing bulb. I never heard of doing this either until I watched videos about it. Search you tube for spooning onions. It also has another name for doing this, i just can't remember it right now.
I have used buried 1/4 inch soaker hoses and am a big fan of automatic watering via soaker hose or drip line. You can attach a timer to the hose bib and set everything up so watering happens on a regular schedule for specific period of time. Well worth setting up and great if you are forgetful or lazy, like me!
That's awesome!
You and James Prigioni are the sh it!
I love James & Tuck! They're one of my favs! Thanks for watching!
@@TheMillennialGardener trust me kid it ain't the dog it's the garden skills you both possess. Now if I could just convince 🤔 James to make a tuck shirt in his merchandise??? Maybe you should put your pup on a Tshirt. My wife would buy several.
Thanks again for sharing all you do in the garden! You are knocking it out of the park!
Thank you for your insights and knowledge hello from Ireland
Fantastic results! Would be interesting to see what you get when you plant double or tripple bulb groupings between the peppers.
Thanks! I intend to follow up once the double and triple bulbs mature versus the singles. We'll see how they do. If they do just as well, I may consider that for next year. I must admit I greatly prefer the look of the single plantings, though.
Right, double/tripl bulb next to the peppers would be a good comparison test, Also a soil test pre planting to show the soil has similar ph, nutrients, ect. Peppers would shade the onions so kinda surprised they did grow better.
@@WeatherNut27, I believe he said he started the onions three(?) weeks ahead of the peppers. That, perhaps, would help explain their ability to grow taller than expected, even though they were more shaded by the peppers as time went on.
@johnbesharian9965 maybe but 3 weeks in beginning of season there's not that much growth but that may definitely have an affect. Nice catch. But still, being shady during most of growing season is still interesting
@@WeatherNut27, Well, what grows best under Shade Trees"? Shade loving plants, maybe some plants grow better after their first few weeks of full exposure to the sun and then are able to keep up with the other types of plants around them that may start at a faster rate than they do.
Thanks glad I looked for your advice was just wondering how to plant and fertilize and now I found out WHERE to plant them. Right by my tomatoes and peppers
I definitely agree with why you're onions are doing better with other plants. They are getting/sharing nutrients with other plants. Plus happy microbiology aswell. What kind of soil do you have in your beds plus what are the sizes?
I’m from Monroe NC transplanted to south central Texas. Still enjoy all garden programs from NC. Your info gives me ideas that work well with a little modifications for this area. Thanks
We have similar heat and dew points, so a lot of what does well here where I live will probably do well for you, too. You have the benefit of much drier summers - or a curse of drier summers, depending on how you look at it. I certainly envy your summers for figs!
@@TheMillennialGardener 👍👍👍
Yellow Granex, and Texas granos here down in the deep south. Blood meal is dead on the best fertilizer for baby onions 100% agree!
It's all that nitrogen. Blood meal is around 12-0-0, usually. Baby onions love it!
I'm so glad he gets to go to the beach with you 🌺
He loves lying in the sand. He’s a real hot dog 😂
This was the first time I get onions and they were all small. I obviously did everything wrong! Lol! I will try doing this next season!
Make sure you're planting the proper onion day-length type for your climate. You have to grow the proper day length for your location, which is a common problem. Long day onions for the north, intermediate day for the mid-latitudes and short-day onions for the south. I explain it in this video: ua-cam.com/video/1gKvOx5R39A/v-deo.html
If you have the day-length type correct, then this video will help. These changes I made made a big difference. I strongly recommend growing onions from seed, not sets.
Thank-you for the informative video! I love onions and grow them every year. Next year I will take your advice and combine them with my peppers.
I plant garlic with my tomato and potato plants. I'm now thinking I should add onions too! Garlic and onion are what I use a LOT of for cooking! Yes I also have Merigolds and Zennia to bring in pollinators and confuse the (bad bugs).
I interplant garlic as well. The garlic gets interplanted with the indeterminates. The onions are in with the peppers, determinate tomatoes and dwarf tomatoes. Nightshades and alliums do GREAT together.
Marigold is poison to gophers, so they cause a ring of protection, can't remember how far.
My chipmunks don't eat the garden, but they do a daily search for grubs, caterpillars and worms under the leaves. More likely to do a row of pots than a raised bed. My golden mantels can get through the wires for 2.5 weeks, they will harvest all the peas, then repeatedly shove themselves into the wire spaces in disbelief when too big.
I am drooling for green bean stew made with that young onion bulb and its leaves.
This year, I interplanted my onions in the extra space between my immature hascap berry bushes. I haven't planted out my peppers yet and am hoping to do so this week after I install my drip irrigation system tomorrow. You've got me thinking that I should put some left over onion seedlings between the peppers as you did. Maybe the onions will keep away the pepper maggot fly that attacked my peppers last year. I garden in S. Ontario, Canada.
I knew there had to be somebody out there who could explain onions. Thank you so much. Now I know what was missing. Water and fertilizer. Looking forward to some good-sized onions in Canada. 🤗
Onions are one of the plants that absolutely LOVE water! It's almost as if you can't give them enough, if your beds are well drained. Got an idea for you, use a tennis ball as a comparison to show the size of your onions, everyone knows how big a tennis ball is. Also, I always plant my peppers and my tomatoes side by side. Pepper and tomatoes are both plant members of the Nightshade or Solanaceae, so they grow well together. Beautiful onions!! I have found that if you plant onion sets, you can have success with long day onions here in NC, a short day climate. Next year, I'm gonna try walla walla onions, a large very sweet variety that is a long day onion. I will try the onions and peppers in the same bed next spring, thanks!!
Brilliant!! After all what goes better together than onions and peppers.❤