Growing Onions from Seed

In the world of growing your own food, the best advice on the very common question of "what should I grow?" is simple: grow what you eat.  

You'll be saving money on your grocery bill by eliminating those things you're paying for at the grocery store and you'll be producing crops that taste a million times better than anything store bought.  

Now if you live in Alaska and you're always eating pineapple, your expectations will have to be slightly adjusted.  😉

But in a more practical sense, what you're used to eating on a regular basis will often be the kind of food that grows natively in the soil in your area. Thankfully, onions are one of those crops that can be grown in a wide variety of areas (as well as being used in a wide variety of ways) so it should fit nicely into your crops. You'll have to determine based on your location if you should be growing long day, short day or intermediate onions, and that's important for success for where you are.  I'm in zone 6a, and we grow long day onions here.  

This is my 3rd year of attempting to grow my own onions from seed. With most new projects, a period of trial and error comes into play and that is no different here. 

Year 1, the germination rate was brutally dismal.  After a few weeks and zero progress I dumped the entire plan.  I've since concluded that the seeds I had were past their "best by" date and that was most likely the reason for failure.

Year 2, I followed some advice I'd read online about planting, specifically overseeding and thinning out before planting and at first that seemed to work out pretty well. I used a different seed company than the first year and germination was nearly 100%.  They grew fairly well but once I finally transplanted them outside after the last frost date passed, they failed miserably. Strong start, but failure after going into the ground. I'm still not entirely sure why, but I suspect they weren't strong enough to go into the ground, and that heavy squirrel activity had something to do with it.  

This year I decided to do an experiment.  Two different trays of seeds (same seed company) and two different types of planting.  

Method #1:

In Tray #1, I have 36 plug cells, and 1 single seed in each plug. Germination rate for this tray was astounding as I ended up with 33.  So the germination rate this year, for this method, was very impressive. 

Method #2:

In Tray #2 I have 16 pots with 8-12 seeds in each pot.  Germination for this method was equally impressive with almost 100% germination rate for all. I used about half the seeds per pot as I did last year.

The most noticeable thing, is the strength of plants in the individual plug trays, as opposed to the ones in the overseeded pots. As of today, 3 weeks after the seeds were planted, the ones in pots, are much taller, and much stronger than the ones in the individual plug trays.  

I will keep documenting this process as the weeks go by and it will be interesting to see which onion plants do better. My hope, of course, is that the plants will continue to grow well, and then thrive once outside in the native soil.  If squirrel activity remains an issue, I'll be investing in some pest netting to remove that from the eqation. 

As of today, with all the plants, a "haircut" was in order and they were all cut down to roughly 3 inches.  I will keep documenting this Onion from Seed journey to see where it goes and my hope is, it serves to help anyone else on the same self-sufficient journey to growing their own food for their families.