Planting Onions and Leeks

June 11, 2024

The vegetable garden is nearly all planted!

My gardeners have been very busy in my large, half-acre vegetable garden. Last week, they planted the season's crops of onions and leeks which were all started from seed in my greenhouse. Onions and leeks are part of the Allium family. They are hardy, thrive in full sun, and are easy to grow in a variety of soils and climates.

Here are some photos.

: Every year we harvest lots of wonderful, fresh onions. it’s one of our favorite crops to pick here at my farm. The onion, Allium cepa, is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium.

: 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.

: Onions should be planted when temperatures are still a bit cool once they start to grow, and then warm when they begin to mature. Early planting gives the onions time to develop tops and store energy for the bulbs.

: This day was perfect for planting our onions and leeks. Here, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, measures the bed for proper placement. Healthy green plants should be 1 to 1 1/2 inches deep in rows 12 to 15 inches apart.

: Ryan creates the rows using a bed preparation rake from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Hard plastic red tubes slide onto selected teeth of the rake to mark the rows.

: A dibber or dibble or dibbler is a pointed wooden stick for making holes in the ground so that seeds, seedlings or small bulbs can be planted. Dibbers come in a variety of shapes including the straight dibber, the T-handled dibber like this one, the trowel dibber, and the L-shaped dibber.

: Onion seeds are less expensive than other growing options such as sets and starts. Starting onions from seed can also offer a wider variety of onion types.

: Because I use a lot of onions for cooking and for sharing with my family, we plant many trays of onions.

: Our seed packets are kept in plastic envelopes, and plastic bins – all are labeled and filed for easy reference and stored 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 and leeks. We get our seeds from our favorite companies and wherever I find them during my travels.

: Here is one tray of onions in our Urban Cultivator the day we started them.

: Here they are a few days later…

: And then last week, we took them all out to plant in the garden. Onions are closely related to garlic, leeks, shallots, scallions and chives.

: Matthew separates the plants and places each one down in the row a few inches from the next.

: Using the dibber, Phurba carefully positions the plant with the root end down and pushes it into the soil about two-inches deep until all the roots are well covered.

: Onions are also categorized in two growing types: long-day and short-day. Long-day onions begin sprouting in late spring to summer when days are between 14 and 16 hours long. Short-day onions begin sprouting when days are between 10 and 12 hours in length – winter and early spring.

: Be sure the top of the plant’s neck isn’t covered too deeply. If too much of the plant is buried, the growth of the onion will be reduced and constricted.