Onions

Harvesting and preserving your fruit & veg

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Geoff
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How have your Onions been this year - mine have been rather strange.
As I've said before, I grow them all from seed in clumps of about 5 a foot apart in rows also a foot apart. This year they grew masses of top and quite good sized Onions as well. I had two problems though. They never made any attempt to start dying down, just stayed lush green. Possibly the dry followed by rain. In the end I loosened them all and when that failed to slow them down I dug them up. The other problem was that two of the three white varieties had very thick necks, quite a few with flowers. Red ones were normal. The worst were Bedfordshire Champion followed by Ramata Di Milano. Rijnsburger and Red Baron were fine. Here are a couple of strings each of these at about 8Kg per string.
Onions2.jpg
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All the other whites are just in trays to keep an eye on / use first. It means we have a bit of an imbalance as there are two more strings of Red Baron not in the picture and there should really have been more white than red.
Sorting through the Ramata Di Milano I found this strange thing.
Onions1.jpg
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Johnboy
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Hi Geoff,
What you have there is a bulblet. It is what you would expect if you were propagating using the scale method.
I have never seen this naturally occurring before but somehow I suspect that it is caused by damage of the plate of the onion where the scale meets the plate. Is there any evidence of this?
A very interesting phenomena.
I know that you can propagate an F1 onion by using the scale technique which simply clones them. It seems to have managed it all by itself!
JB.
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Geoff
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It has sort of split three ways. Perhaps a sharp stone or a nick during weeding?
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Johnboy
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Hi Geoff,
I suspect that you are going to experiment with these. At least I hope you are.
If you look at the righthand of your latest photograph you can see that there are damaged scales exposed without any portion of the plate but what you cannot see it the actual point of growth of these bulblets.
I do hope that you keep us all informed of the progress.
I find this quite exciting!
JB.
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Geoff
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I hadn't thought of trying to grow them. What are you thinking, tease them off now and pot them up and keep frost free over Winter?
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Johnboy
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Hi Geoff,
Bulblets normally get to a point when they throw out their own roots and then generally detach themselves. This can sometimes take quite a time but just at present I would keep them under close scrutiny and await and see what occurs. The problem is where to keep them. I mean under what conditions. A 64,000 dollar question!
JB.
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Primrose
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Lovely photos Geoff, and by the look of it, a good crop.
I can't remember ever seeing this happen in the onions I've grown and it would certainly be interesting if you could pot them up and protect them in a greenhouse over winter to see what happens. It would be a shame not to take this further, if only to discover just how clever plants can sometime be.

I remember my surprise when I learned on this site that you could actually generate new tomato plants from sideshoots and my delight when I experimented and found that this was quite true.
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Johnboy
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Hi Primrose,
Have a try at propagating Onions using the scale technique. As stated previously you can actually propagate an F1 variety and produce a clone which will have all the attributes of its parents.
Having been a propagator for over 33 years I find different methods of achieving the same thing fascinating. If you are not sure how too just PM me and I'll give you the Gen.
JB.
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Geoff
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Well I've pulled one off and potted it up and put the main bulb on its side in a half tray with a little damp compost so we'll see what happens.
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