Hi all - I'm trying overwintering onions from seed for the first time and I could do with some advice from those of you who've done it before.
They're a few weeks old now, and have two leaves. But it's only August! Should I plant them out at the weekend? Or leave till September, which is when I expected to plant them.
(I have to eat a lot of potatoes to make room for them ;D)
And I think that white rot is a problem in some onions overwinter. Does anyone do anything to the soil like adding sand or anything like that, to aid drainage?
I'm unreasonably excited about these onions, and would hate to lose them!
I'm a little puzzled by you having 2 leaves as mine always have 1 long green spike usually with the seedcase still on the tip. these can be left growing till there is room for them.mine vary from just peeping through to app 4" high
I always grow onions from seed as you get more choice and I feel they are slower to bolt
marg
They don't have to go out yet. What I do is to mix sand into the soil, plant out in a long row along one of my raised beds and put 2 long cloches over them to keep them snug. I've got a fair few to go out and have the bag of sand ready and waiting for the space to come free :D
Okay I'll get some sand. And it sounds like it's okay to leave them in their trays till there's space then. I've got a lot of potatoes to eat my way through first!
Thanks for the advice
(PS theothermarg, they have two long spikey leaves, close together, and the instructions I read somewhere said to plant them out when they have two 'true leaves'. But it's not clear like it is for other seedlings)
Hi Pigeonseed
My overwintering (Japanese) onion seedlings are also at the two leaf stage. They started off with the one leaf then developed a second from the base of the plant. Mine are around 3" tall and I planted out half of mine only this evening (first time trying the overwintering type for me so I'm not an expert by any means)
I think one of your criteria has to be how deep the soil/compost is in your seed tray and how close together the seedlings are. You may want to consider pricking them out into individual modules for a few weeks before finally planting out ... depending on the quantities involved.
My limited experience indicates that if pricked out into 1.5" square x 2" deep modules (40 to the seed tray), with the modules absolutely full of compost, the plants will develop into quite robust little onions. Seedlings that are left in the original seed tray, (which is inevitably never totally full of compost) develop more slowly and appear generally less robust, even though they've not been disturbed (very much). When these onions were finally planted out, the less robust plants had a higher over-winter mortality rate than those that had been pricked out into fresh compost.
This data was accumulated from a couple of trays of seedlings grown from seeds set by a red "Electric" onion that had bolted. I've applied these observations to my current crop of red "Sonic" onion seedlings and they do seem to be developing very well having been pricked out.
Yes that was a concern, Kypfer. They don't have a huge amount of soil, and it's also very soggy. So I might pot them up and then plant out in a couple of weeks.
I haven't got a huge number. I wonder whether I should do some more... no stop it! Onion mad. ::)
(and thanks for the moral support bridbod - they sound like they're at the same stage as mine. fingers crossed!)