Topic: lift or leave

[5rod]

 ???
Any advise,
 I'm Mick I live in sussex and its my first year and I am concerned with all this rain on my onion sets which I planted in march ,should I lift early to avoid rot or leave

[PAULW]

MICK
Over the billions of years onions have been on the earth I think they have managed to survive a bit of rain so far, now if they were your overwintering onions I would have said lift them before they split.

[cambourne7]

I would leave them till you start to see the first signs.

However what you also do is harvest as required which means that your using them so if you lose s few at the end its not a big deal. Its certainly what i did as i had no store variaty and i had onions for a month. And of course the ones i left in the qround kept growing :-)

[keef]

If its white rot your worried about - then i think thats normally worse in hot dry conditions (remember them?). If you do lift them now they probably won't keep as long though...

[Mike J]

Downy mildew attacking the onions on our site (West Sussex) and also on my Dad's in Surrey, manifested by leaves collapsing overnight, browny, distressed look - some people are leaving them in to see if they recover, others chopping the leaves off, others lifting them now. So far mine seem OK, though the shallots appear to have it, but they look ready to harvest anyway.

Should I just leave the onions (these are this seasons not over-wintering) and hope the weather picks up and reduces the risk of this mildew, or lift them anyway -  they are a fairly respectable size (best looking onions I've ever grown actually - my two previous attempts have been major failures)