i would love some onion advice. I’m planting in Feb in trays, putting out weekly from April 1 until now. they never get bulbs. they don’t turn into onions. they stay too small. i fed them some fish fert and they got calmag at the start when i put them out. now they get 10/10/10 with everyone else. I’ve got a line or a handful in each bed to see what works. nothing has ever worked!
Does anyone wind protect their onions? I had them planted in a more protected location last year and they did well, I just only had 10. This year, I have more but no protection and at least half are a sprawling tangled mess I don’t think are going to bulb.
make sure you check the exact latitude your onions are good for. The words long day and and intermediate day may not really show the full picture. if youre in spokane a lot of intermediate days wont bulb.
leeks i feel like i have good success for. my suggestion is start everything a lot earlier. i start my onions and leeks jan 1st. and theyre just getting to adecent size now. like still smaller than a pencil
I have potato onions. Started some in January sometime, I think? I still have not been able to get them planted out and they are tiny. Some I way overseeded because they were a couple years old. A lot still came up!
I have not got the mature ones I have had growing bulb up like regular onions. I made an effort to cut flower stalks this year and see if I get some actual bulbs to use. Otherwise I have used them as green onions.
Harvested the garlic today and will probably leaf the onions for another week (pun intended). Kinda small bulbs likely because I somehow internalized “don’t fertilize them, don’t water them” from this passage in Golden Gate Gardening, oops. Still a pretty fun crop, first time I’ve had space for it
When the plants begin to grow rapidly in late winter and early spring, add a fertilizer that provides more nitrogen than phosphorus or potassium. Watch out for dry spells, especially in spring, and water when necessary but don’t keep the bed soggy.
Thanks, not sure if the perspective comes through but the biggest can’t be 3in across max, probably less. The smallest are about a knuckle wide.
Obviously haven’t grown it anywhere else but I’m sure I’m at a significant climate advantage as well —less than 90min from Gilroy, as a proxy, and basically the same inland valley climate
Picked the onions, mostly pretty dinky for the same reason as the garlic. This whole mess of onions came from one sixer of sets I got shortly after moving in in October. Hand for scale this time.
Tried to braid the garlic and realized I’ve never braided anything and didn’t have a tutorial in me so I tried to figure out braids of 3 on the fly and then braid 3 braids of three and tie them off. Not my best work, I was laughed at.
My garlic was ravaged by rust after growing to a pretty large size. I didn’t notice it until it was too late for a spray to be effective. Now, I’ve removed all of the leaves that had significant rust showing, which was practically all of them. Now, it’s mostly the stems that remain; and I’m wondering what to do next, harvest now or let the stems ripen. Will the garlic bulbs gain any weight or nutrition if I wait until they turn brown? They are quite green and brittle right now, and I have just finished harvesting the scapes on the hardneck garlic.
Does anyone have a garlic braiding tutorial? Mine are sufficiently dry now, the stalk feels papery when I rub my fingers between them, so I want to remove the dirt and roots and braid them.
I bought four pounds of garlic and maybe planted around three and a half of it. I was thinking of gifting some away, but I also have to replant later this year—decisions, decisions. How do you calculate how much garlic you use? It just looks like a lot! Over 300 heads easily, all of varying sizes.
Also, since some stalks developed rust late in the season, should I replant those? Or does rust stay in the soil? I could always use up all of my garlic and buy more, perhaps other varieties, and only plant a pound of California Late White.
Simply excited about the harvest. The cloves are purple with tinges of pink. Very pretty!
I am not good at growing onions. I’m pretty sure it’s because I neglect and don’t feed them. But, this is substantially better than last year, and there’s still 15 to harvest, so good enough. There are 4 varieties here: ruby (only one I grew last year), red of Florence, yellow sweet Spanish and yellow of Parma.
And first attempt at braiding garlic. My garlic was less good than usual this year and I gave away about half. We don’t actually use much garlic, it’s just so easy and fun to grow, and now I’m motivated to continue because braiding it is fun!
my onions are sad, not quite lodging yet but almost. they’re small. i don’t know how to store them to replant as sets. i may leave a bunch in the ground
I actually have something interesting to report. I had some in pots and buried them with soil while planting something else. I pulled them up after being that way for a couple months and they had bulbed up to varying degrees!
