Kitchen Garden Forum

Sorry, don't know where to post these kind of questions

I know you can use shallots for pickling, but is there a particular onion that is used for doing 'pickled onions'?

Can I use pretty much any onion at it's 'baby' stage? If so, would 'Radar' over-wintering onions be ok?

Thank you

Morning Piglet6, Dobies Seeds do a brown pickling onion seed.
This is the best one i have grown, but the name escapes me at the present.

Hi OH,
I am totally shocked at your admission but what I expected you to say was that pulled early Bedfordshire Champion make a wonderful pickling onion which they do! Seriously superb!
JB.

Morning Johnboy, the name that wouldn't come to mind is, Brown pickling sy300, not surprsied it wouldn't spring to mind with a name like that.

Indeed, Bedfordshire Champion do make a fine pickling onion, but i have found sy300 stay crisper for even longer in the jar, however much i hate to admit it.

Hi OH,
But is the taste there? They get eaten very quickly here so mine are always crisp and would remain so long after mine have gone.
My main pickling is Shallots and there are only so many a man dare eat!
JB.

Dear Johnboy, since i'm an honest sort of a fellow, i have to admit the taste isn't quite as good.

I grew the same two varieties of Shallot from seed this year as I did last for pickling. The Prisma have divided bulbs and have been pickled but the Picador have made single bulbs 2 to 2½" diameter so they have been strung up for cooking. We pickled both varieties last year so I don't know what has happened, the catalogue (Seeds of Distinction) says Picador is best for pickling.
Anybody want to write some detailed notes on growing pickling onions, I've never been successful even though I grow all my normal onions from seed.

Hi Geoff,
To grow Bedfordshire Champion as Pickling Onions I sow direct into a bed as you would sow salad onions and use a few thinings spacing as salad onions and generally leave then with a little over an inch spacings when they get to the desired size pull them and hang up to dry out. You can pull them at any stage and therefore you get the odd one or two that mature quite quickly and these can be pulled and saved until you have enough to fill a jar or leave them hanging up until the end of the season and then do the lot.
Whilst growing they get no nurturing whatsoever or fertilizer of any kind.
I treat them mean and in turn they try to be as strong as they can be to punish me! Wonderful taste.
JB.

Thanks for that. I hadn't thought of just pulling them at the size required and saving them up until I have a batch. I would have expected them to go soft when pulled immature. I do very little direct sowing but I guess my 7cm square pots of 5 or 6 seeds planted close together will do the trick anyway.

Hi Geoff,
Its as broad as its long. Certainly growing in pots to start them off is as good as sowing direct. I sow direct because I have generally run out of bench room in the only tunnel that is benched out now.
As they get to the required size I pull them but grown with virtually no spacing they mostly all fill out at the same time and they generally fill out to touch each other and then you get a continuous line of small onions. It is just the odd one or two that would be well over the top when the others are ready. I hang these in my back porch which always has a cool breeze running through it. If they go over the top they end up in the pot!
JB.

If sowing directly into the ground, i find about 500 seeds does a fifteen foot row nicely.

Hello Piglet6
I grow a couple of types of the white pickling onion - Paris Silverskin and Onion de Paris. They are more difficult to find now but DT Brown sell de Paris and you can usually find Silverskin somewhere. We don't actually pickle them but find them excellent for salads, stews, pot roasts etc. They germinate very well indeed and are quite happy right up to maturity when grown thickly. I sow them in lots of quarter trays of compost and eventually plant them out in a row by simply tipping them out of the whole tray when the roots have matted the compost together (bit like the gutter method used for peas).

John

PS SS grows a bit larger than dP.