I always look forward so much to the first day of planting seeds. For me, that’s TODAY, February 5!! Seeds in the onion family are my the first vegetable to go in. I planted nine 6-packs. I like to grow a lot of onions for myself and I also plant some to give some to my gardener friends.
The onion family (Alliaceae) includes onions, leeks, bunching onions, shallots, and others.
Varieties I planted this year are: ONIONS: Red Wethersfield, Yankee, Patterson, Bridger, and Cabernet. LEEKS: Bandit. BUNCHING ONIONS: Red Beard.
I plant my onions 12 weeks before my last spring frost. Other gardeners recommend 2,4,8, or 10 weeks, but 12 weeks has worked well for me for the past 10 years or so. I’m working on updating my Calendar App to share my planting schedules. My app is being totally re-coded. I have removed it from sale for now and will post again when its available.
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Parsley is always the first thing I plant and it’s time for me to get mine started!
OMG – I forgot about my parsley! Somehow I didn’t get it on my list. Thank you for reminding me. I always plant parsley, celery and celeriac with my onions. Maybe since I’m skipping the celery and celeriac this year I forgot the parsley. I don’t know. But I’m going to plant my parsley today.
I live in Southern New Hampshire and i had a bag of onions that went to seed this winter. Do you recommend potting these up now, or just waiting until the grown is soft enough to put outside?
Hi Noelani, When you say that your onions went to seed, I’m guessing that you mean that they sprouted. You can pot them up now if you want to, but unfortunately, if they were full-size supermarket onions, you won’t get another onion from them. The onion sprout will continue to grow, leaves will form, and then in the summer you’ll get a nice big onion flower. The flower will then dry and form onion seeds. You could collect the seeds and plant them to get more onions. You could also you pick the green onion leaves and chop them up and eat them at anytime.
Onions are called biennials, which means they have a two year life cycle. In the first year of growth, the seed forms an onion bulb, and then in the second, the bulb forms a flower and seeds. It’s a really interesting life cycle. The flowers can be quite pretty and if you want to try growing some onions, just to see what they look like, that sounds like fun. Maybe you could even collect seeds and grow onions next year!
If the onions were the small 1 inch ones that you buy in a plant nursery, you should plant these as soon as you can. They are dormant onion bulbs that were harvested before they reached full size. They will start and will start growing again an make a big onion.
In either case, if you do want to grow the onion and it’s already sprouting you should get it into the ground or a pot as soon as possible as it will rot if it can’t get some roots growing soon.