Overwintered Onions....

orchidpepper

Hi everyone,

I planted 50 'snowball' onion sets last Autumn but to be honest... they aren't much bigger now than when I planted them, same with my garlic. I've popped some poultry manure pellets around them to see if that helps.

Has anyone else tried these? Or any overwintered onion.

Don't know if it will make a difference but my plot was flooded and under a foot of water for a while in winter. I lost quite a few of the onions because of it.

Would appreciate any feedback

Thanks

Gayle

[Deleted User]

They really should be big by now and almost ready to harvest and tbh I would be very afraid of white rot after your flooding. I lifted most of mine a couple of weeks ago as the constant rain was making some leaves/stems slimy, I have dehydrated them because they would not have stored. There are about 10 left and some have bent leaves now, almost ready to harvest. Yours should be at that stage

I would give them some quick liquid feed like phostrogen or miracle gro and see how they get on but be aware that you cannot grow alliums on a site that has had white rot, for at least twenty years. I would lift one and examine it very carefully for softness, moisture etc

foxgloves

We don't usually grow overwintered onions but a friend gave us 10 sets last autumn so we planted a row in one of our veg beds. They didn't do very much, 3 of them were very feeble, then died. In early Spring, I decided they weren't worth the space we'd devoted to them as we needed it for something else, so I dug up the remaining 7 & replanted them in a plastic trough. For some reason, this improved them....can't think why......we now have a plastic trough with 7 healthy onions growing to what looks to be a reasonable size. Think we'll stick to our Spring planted ones in future, but glad I gave these few survivors a chance & didn't throw them away.

orchidpepper

Thanks for your info, glad i'm not the only one foxglove :-)

Not sure if i'll bother again but as Kittie says, I'll keep on feeding them and see what happens, it's not over yet lol

Gayle

Ambidou

We had a bad strike with ours this year, every single one of them went bull necked, it was a shame to lose 75 onions after 7 months of growing

[Deleted User]

we lifted 4 of the remaining onions today and they were quite big ones. I saute`ed them in butter for quite a long time and turned them into the most delicious french onion soup. The onions must have been full of water as they saute`ed down to three medium bowlfuls of soup. They are a disaster waiting to happen unless people are aware that they can turn bad very quickly. The rest of mine will be up tomorrow and I am preparing all of them for french onion soup, then I`ll freeze them

warwicktiger

Poultry manure is very acidic and should be mixed with other compost in a composting bin than used directly, the soil may not be too friendly to your onions!

In general I would try and stick with homemade compost or good old fashioned horsesh1t

Kyrae

Mine have hardly grown too Ones last year did fine so guessing its due to the weather or something!