Kitchen Garden Forum

Disappointed again this year with the size of my onions they are only the size of a golf ball.In the five years which I have been on this site I have not been able to grow them bigger than this.Still usable but for kitchen use I would have liked to have grown them to tennis ball size at least.
Soil is sandy/loam into which I add plenty of muck and treat with an onion fertilizer two weeks before planting up sets of "Sturon",water when necessery and give another feed of a general fertilizer halfway or so through the growing season,weeded regularly but no size to them.
The shallots are the same,only 4/5 in the bunch and of a small size.

I've had the same result with my Sturon onions. Biggest about small apple size, but most about golf ball. I wonder if it is due to the very hot weather we had recently and lack of water?

I didn,t grow any onions this summer but did grow a lot of ordinary and elephant garlic and both were truly miserable in size, so same family and I suspect that yes, it was due to the weather. Disappointing when you rely on them for your basic day to day needs though.

I don't grow onions, but our shallots have been fine this year and the garlics huge. But I did water them very copiously and regularly which our late local onion guru Derek Raw (he used win the onion classes in big shows) was the most important thing for the onion family.

Pretty rubbish for me as well & they tried to bolt! OK loads to use now but very few to store! Rubbish is probably where they will end up! Garlic looked promising but did not progress into big cloves (IOW bulbs), & shallots are small as well but at least did not bolt! Thankfully they are all cheap to buy!

Onions were rubbish this year most of my garlic was good but a bit on the small size luckily I planted far more than I normally do the elephant garlic was a disaster I planted twelve mainly for my eldest I managed to get two and were small

Onions were bolting early this year for a couple of us on the plot, it was suggest due to weather, happy with result though they were all over wintered.

Sowed some spring onions and let get larger than normal, very tasty nearly blows you head off.

Does anyone grow Japanese onions? Been reading the mags & they are suggesting sowing the seed around now! I have had seed packs in the past & they look quite big but squatter, but it was a free pack from somewhere & I didn't actually sow them or even read any instructions on it. Currently I grow sets but find results are not too great lately & tried the normal New Year sowing from seed but the little blighters wouldn't uncurl the first hook & rotted (OK some I helped & killed as well)! I am wondering if maybe these are a solution to get some decent onions?

I have grown Senshyu Yellow from seed in the past with reasonable success but if you are short of space you do get gaps. I used to sow them about a week earlier than this but you should be fine down there, I started them in small pots. If you can persuade a plastic tunnel cloche to stay in place over them all Winter it helps a lot (sometimes I have lost them through physical damage from a flapping cloche). I've used sets the last few years with variable success, this year I had a lot flower but we are using the onions. I get some white rot and I think the Japanese onions maturing earlier escape it a bit.

When I sowed the spring onions I used the multi seed method 8/10 per cell for spring onions pulled the good looking ones first and left others in ground.

Sow 6/7 for bulbs which I have not tried yet.

Rubbish onions here, too, and that is Aumtumn and Summer ones...

It will be interesting to see what luck the local grower of Shallots and pickling onions, has had.

If it somewhat eases the pain, I'd be lucky if I find one the size of a cherry in my balcony garden. As an inexperienced gardener I must have sown them at the wrong time of the year. They're very local varieties called North-Holland Red and Rijnsburger. Pretty sure nobody has heard of them before.

I've seen North Holland Red in my many forays into sites here in the UK. I am going to do a bit more research & try Japanese onions this year & not worry about sets so much, but will get a few from the pound shop as they do as good as any others I spend well more on! I will also try to grow normal seeds as well in January to see it they can actually pass just germination!

I grew Rijnsburger for many years, Elmigo, because they were very good keepers. As far as I know they are still available now.

Having posted on another thread how my over Winter onion sets flowered here are my summer onions from seed. As you can see many have flowered but have grown fairly big as well. Ailsa Craig from the free packet in the foreground, there are some Red Baron behind that you can't really see.