Onions are an easy edible crop to grow as long as you have a sunny site. You can grow them from seed or from bulbs purchased at a garden store. Grow them in containers, raised bed, or the ground as long as each bulb has at least 6 inches of space.
Tips For Growing Onions
1. The easiest way to grow onions is from "sets", which are bags of baby onions sold in garden stores. Simply pop them into the ground and watch them mature in 14 weeks! You can push them into the ground with a finger (in good, soft soil) and your planting job is complete.
2. Don't plant them too close together. Onions grow fairly large under the ground and on top of the soil, so give them some room. When onions are planted too closely together, they end up growing oddly and neither competing onion turns out particularly well.
3. White, yellow, and red onions are all easy to grow. Everyone has different tastes, some preferring the sweet yellow onions (like Vidalias), while others enjoy the bite of a fresh red (purple) onion.
4. Onions can serve as a natural pest repellent for other nearby plants. Onions repel deer, rabbits and other foragers along with insect pests like thrips and aphids. It is easy to slip an onion bulb among established plantings each spring.
Onions make good companions for the following plants:
- fruit trees
- nightshades (tomatoes, some peppers, potatoes)
- brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower)
- carrots
Potatoes also are easy to grow with onions. Just toss your potato chunks (from sets) in a bowl with starter onion babies and plant them all together. Super easy! Just keep them away from beans, peas and parsley. Onions don't play nice with them and both plants will suffer.
5. Onions need high-quality soil. Like potatoes and other root crops, a rich, loose loam will allow the onions to grow quickly. Hard soil will produce small, dented onions and potatoes, and carrots that look like someone smashed them.
6. Harvest onions after the stems have died. Wait for the stems to go from green to brown and fall over, and then pull the onions out of the ground!
7. Don't wait too long to harvest your onions or the stems will wither away, and it will be hard to remember where the onions are growing. Those left in the ground might rot. That said, a lot of onions left in the ground make it through the winter and start growing again come spring.
