Topic: autumn planting

[antsuxx]

  Hi is it  really beneficial to  plant onion sets  and garlic in autumn? plea se
    new  to this
              thanks ,    Ant

[manicscousers]

Hi, welcome to a4a  ;D
we always plant some onions and garlic in autumn, we lost lots of the red onion sets overwinter but the garlic was brilliant

[Jeannine]

In y experience the garlic is much bigger and in some onions, Walla Walla which is a fave of mine they are much sweeter.

XX Jeannine

[Alex133]

Garlic much bigger and better from autumn planting. Haven't tried onions yet but someone else's Sensyshu were brilliant and ready long before spring planted ones - so you can have home grown all year.

[cornykev]

Hi Ant, I always plant Autumn onions, they tied me over until the early March planted onions are ready, will give the winter shallots a miss this year though. ;D ;D ;D

[shirlton]

We always plant radar to overwinter. If you want to store the garlic I believe that softneck keep better.

[antipodes]

Garlic definitely. I get much better yields than my neighbouring plots that grow in spring. Onions, I have never tried as spring planted gives me really good results.

[petefj]

My over wintering onions and garlic were absolute winners.  I plan on planting more this September/October.  My garlic were particularly good. 
Give it a go, you might well be surprised.

Peter

[gavinjconway]

Hi Ants. Garlic needs the winter to form properly - so get them in end of oct - nov...

Japanese or Radar onions are great for autumn planting. I normally start to eat mine mid april as onions in white sauce... basically pull them when they are thumb thickness and cut into pieces - including lots of the greens, mic or simmer for 5 min and add chees / white sauce... Like leeks but better!!  ;D

enjoy

[brown thumb]

GAVIN  do you mean you sow seeds or sets to get that size as onions in awhite sauce sounds yummy

[gavinjconway]

I always grow my onions from sets... they dont really bolt like seed onions do..


Do you want a master class on growing onions..

[brown thumb]

no i dont need a master class on growing onions or any other class you said ,quote  pull when thumb thickness thats got me  thinking you grew from seed as my sets is always larger than thumb thickness at the time of planting out unless you have huge thumbs   lol

[gavinjconway]

I wasn't being funny about sharing some info growing onions.. 

When I say thumb thickness I mean the whole onion as it grows.. like 6 - 8 " of growth.. When a set starts yes its like finger size but the growth is not... so wait a few months till it is ALL thumb thickness and then start to eat... 

[brown thumb]

 thanks for the reply  i now know what  you mean about thumb size the growth and not the onion you had me confused which is not hard to do my spring grown onions is big enough so iam happy on that score just interested if autumn grown ones would be any  more use to me freeing up more ground for spring growing other vege etc

[Nigel B]

Last year's overwintered onions did poorly really. We lost all the reds and the two varieties of whites are smaller than the spring-planted sets.
The Garlic just sucked up the cold weather though. I have a drawer-full of the stuff! :)

I'll still try again with autumn-planted onions though. When the winter isn't too bad, they produce beauties!.

[claybasket]

Hi i usually grow winter onion sets with good results,I grow some onions from seed the Bedford champion,was very pleased ,my onion sets were larger than i've ever had before!ill try growing garlic this autum and radar onions.

[PeterVV]

my garlic and onions that I planted in Oct last year did realy well, the onions were huge , over  apound each! - variety was Electric (red onion)

[Weed-Digga]

Hi Ant
We grow over-wintering onion sets mainly because it's nice to have something in the ground over the winter.

We sometimes lose a few to the weather, more so the reds than the white varieties, we buy our for about (can't find pound symbol!!) 1.20 for about 100 from our lottie shop.

Don't grow garlic as we don't eat it.

Weed-Digga