Time to Start Our Onions from Seed
Here at my Bedford, New York farm, patches of snow and ice cover the ground, but inside my greenhouse there's a flurry of spring activity. This time every year, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, starts seeding our vegetables in preparation for the coming growing season. One of the first vegetables we start are the onions.
Starting onions from seed isn’t difficult. They can be planted closely together in seed starting trays, and because they are shallow-rooted, they can be pulled apart easily when ready for transplanting outdoors. Many of our seed trays, supplies, and seeds are from Johnny’s Selected Seeds - we've been using Johnny's for years. Once planted, the onion seeds remain in the greenhouse until they’re moved to my vegetable garden. And by mid-summer, we will have lots and lots of beautiful, flavorful, fat bulbs to harvest.
Enjoy these photos.
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- Remember all the onions we harvested last year? Such a bounty of gorgeous fresh onions – it’s one of our favorite crops to pick. The onion, Allium cepa, is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium.
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- Onions require 90 to 100 days to mature from seed, which is around four months. We start seeding our vegetables shortly after the New Year and then in spring we transplant them into the garden.
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- Seed starting trays come in all different sizes and depths. We use trays with shallow compartments for planting onion seeds. These are 20-row seed flats from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. They keep varieties separate and make the removal of seedlings easy for transplanting to larger celled trays or pots later.
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- Because I use a lot of onions for cooking and for sharing with my family, we plant many trays of onion seeds. Ryan fills the seed starting tray with mix and pats it down lightly into each row.
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- It’s best to use a pre-made seed starting mix that contains the proper amounts of vermiculite, perlite and peat moss. Seed starting mixes are available at garden supply stores.
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- The soil should be level with the top of the tray. Ryan fills several trays first and works in a production line process.
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- Next, Ryan uses a wooden marker to make quarter-inch deep furrows in each row.
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- We keep all our seed packets in plastic envelopes, and plastic bins – all are labeled and filed for easy reference. Mason jars with tight-fitting lids, or glass canisters with gasket-type lids also work. Humidity and warmth shorten a seed’s shelf life, so we store the organized seed packets in a greenhouse refrigerator. Then, when it is time to seed our trays, we know they are well organized and in good condition. Here are many of our seeds for onions, shallots, and leeks. We get our seeds from our favorite companies and wherever I find them during my travels. Ryan labels the seed markers and keeps them together with the matching packets.
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- On one side of the marker he writes the vegetable variety so we can keep track of what grows well and what doesn’t.
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- On the other side, Ryan indicates what color this particular onion variety is – R for red, W for white, and Y for yellow.
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- Onion seeds are very small, so be sure to take time dropping them into the tray cells. It’s also a good idea to keep a record of when seeds are sown, when they germinate, and when they are transplanted. These observations will help organize a schedule for the following year. This is a hand seed sower from Johnny’s Selected Seeds – it is one option to help drop the seeds into the trays. This tool allows one to control the flow of seeds through five different size outlets. The funnel-shaped spout makes it easy to return unused seeds to packet.
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- After pouring a generous amount of seeds into the center dish, Ryan screws the plastic top back onto the hand seed sower and adjusts the amount of seeds that will be released at one time.
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- And then he begins to drop onion seeds evenly into each compartment.
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- Ryan places a marker into one of the cells, so it is clear what variety is growing in what tray.
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- It is good to start larger onions from seed, so they can be harvested the same year. Smaller onions can be planted directly into the ground. Barolo onions are long-day onions with globe-shaped, dark purple-red bulbs.
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- Once the seeds are dropped, Ryan adds an additional light layer of soil mix, so the seeds are completely covered.
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- Then he tamps down lightly to make sure there is good contact with the soil.
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- If preferred, one can also drop seeds by hand. The pellet coating on these seeds helps in seeing, handling, and sowing.
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- A line of seeds is dropped along the row. The sprouts will be selectively thinned in a few weeks. This process eliminates the weaker sprouts and prevents overcrowding, so seedlings don’t have any competition for soil nutrients or room to mature.
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- Ryan also adds another thin layer of soil mix to this tray and tamps down lightly.
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- Once the seed trays are done he places them into our trusted commercial size Urban Cultivator growing system – it has water, temperature and humidity all set-up in the refrigerator like unit.
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- He covers the trays with plastic humidity domes until germination begins. Once established, the trays will be moved out into the greenhouse where they will remain until they are ready to be separated and transplanted into the ground.
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- Seeds are usually started about two months before the last frost. We will be planting seeds well into March. Follow along to see what other vegetables are started from seed right here in my greenhouse. I hope these blogs help remind you what you can do to get ready for the next gardening season.
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