I must say that, as the end-user, the larger onions Matthew grew this year are fabulous. It’s a lot easier peeling one big[ger] onion than lots of tiny ones — this chef is very happy! Now on to the guest post by Matthew . . . .
I’ve been trying to grow an onion that I’m satisfied with for years. I kept getting small onions. Finally, this year, things went well. I started last December by planting four seeds per 1.5″ x 1.75″ soil block. I believe this careful regular spacing was important. Previous years I scatter-seeded and wound up with plants too dense to grow well. This year I got nice thick pencil-sized of onion starts for transplanting.
I grew Aussie Brown, Stuttgarter, Brown Spanish, Red Amposta, Bronze Amposta, Valencia, and Sierra Blanca. The Bronze Amposta, Valencia, and Sierra Blanca are sweeter onions without a lot of storage life, but they produced very well for me. The Bronze Amposta is supposed to have a 3-6 month storage life, so that’s probably my best bet of the bunch, and what I focused a lot of production on this year.
This year was also complicated by a trip out of town right when the Ampostas and the Valencias were wanting to finish growing. I compromised and harvested most early, to avoid risk of them rotting in the ground, but I left a few Valencias to see what happened, and, wow, did they bulk up in that last two weeks the others didn’t get. Granted that could have also been all the extra space they had, but I expect it was mostly the time . . . .
As you see, my Valencia late harvest was the champion. The Bronze di Amposta may have rivaled them had I let them keep growing. The Sierra Blanca mostly grew to maturity, so I think that is about the size I can expect.
I’ll probably keep brown Spanish in the mix as a longer storage onion (10 months), and do a very few of the others I grew this year to repeat the experiment, but I think I have my primary four onions I’ll be growing unless any other onion wows me.
These were transplanted out at 6” spacing, kept well weeded, and heavily mulched with leaves as soon as they were big enough. I think I might mulch first and plant through the mulch next year.
I’m also growing leeks, shallots, Egyptian (top-setting) onions, and potato onions (from SESE). Leeks and Egypt onions for greens are certain keepers. So far the shallots and potato onions are looking pretty good, too.
Her Green Life 