Growing Onions

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Growing onions, the pleasures and the pitfalls.

I love growing onions! I think they are the most rewarding vegetable to grow and nothing beats the great feeling of cooking with your own produce. It isn't always easy though. I'm going to tell a few stories about what I've had go wrong and what I did about it.

Growing Onions in the Fall 

Summer's over so there's nothing to do in the garden - right? Wrong! It's the perfect time to start growing onions.

It's late August in the garden and the fall will soon be here. Everything is coming to an end but for someone growing onions, fall is just the start. One of my favourite onions to grow is the "multiplier onion". Anyone can grow them - I've even grown them in big pots in a concrete backyard.
I plant them in August or September and I start pulling them as soon as they are big enough. The earliest ones are a bit like scallions. I usually have some ready by November, just around Thanksgiving, and I'm picking them right through till Easter some years.
I buy them as onion 'sets' from the local garden center and plant them into well-drained soil or maybe a big tub. The sets look a bit like small shallots with a round end and a pointy end. I push the set down into the soil so that just the pointy end is showing. Don't do what I did the first time and plant them upside down! They won't grow!
A week or so later green shoots should start to appear. Water them occasionally if you live somewhere dry but not too much or they'll rot. They are quite forgiving though, so if the leaves start to look at all withered just give the bases a good soak. Don't drown them - they don't like it!
If you want to know more about growing all kinds of garden vegetables have a look at Home Vegetable Gardening Guide - there's even a special fall offer if you buy it now!

Flickr 

 by Funky Tee

Onion by Frank_BB

Onion

dinner for one by LivyAnn

dinner for one

Cheese and Onions by Watt_Dabney

Cheese and Onions

A Sea of Dew and Green by claire.whitehouse

A Sea of Dew and Gre...

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Amazon 

Vegetable gardening books

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None 

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