Onion seeds, how long?

[T]

Hi All,

It has been two weeks since I planted my onion seeds. Everything else I planted is coming up, but not the onions.

How long do they typically take?

Many thanks,

-T

[Wilson]

Last year on 5/21/21 I planted some of my saved Stuttgart Onion seeds and my notes it says they came up on 06/05/21 so, 15 days. Those I planted never got bigger than the bulb sets I usually put out, but I'm in Zone 4.

[T]

So I need to learn some patience!

:-)

[Hul Tytus]

How did the branches you had in water go?

Hul

T snipped-for-privacy@> > > >> Hi All,

[T]

On 6/9/22 17:00, Hul Tytus wrote: > How did the branches you had in water go? >

If you meant the coke berry and bill berryies, they all died.

[songbird]

do you have any clay in that soil and have you been keeping them evenly moist? how deep did you plant them?

if you had a hot dry spell and there's not enough clay and organic material in the soil to keep them evenly moist then they're not going to have a good time trying to grow. a layer of mulch over when it gets really hot probably would also help.

did any come up since? have you continued to water the location where you planted the seeds?

songbird

[T]

No clay. Decomposed sandstone mixed in with a ton of peet. About 5:1 peet to silt ratio.

About 1/4 to 1/2". I fertilized (organic 4-4-6) and turned the soil over before planting. I can work the soil with my hands. It is loose.

I bet you called it. I hvae not watered them a bunch, fearing I'd make them rot

Zero yet. Hopefully they are still dormant and a bunch of water will wake the up.

[T]

Everyone got a double watering. The onion seeds got a quadruple watering.

Fired up my liquid ph meter and measured some muddy water. The meter freaked out going between 5 something and 7 something

[songbird]

sand or grit has very little surface area compared to clay this also means it is poor at holding nutrients or water. adding even a little bit of clay will help your gardens plus it will make your organic amendments go further.

if you look up any analysis method for gardening soils it will tell you that prime garden soil is a mixture of sand, silt and clay along with some organic matter.

to the different extents you have more or less of each of the basics (the three sizes of particles) will say a lot about your capability to grow many garden plants.

evenly moist is what to aim for. sodden won't work well for many seeds. intermittent they may have sprouted and died. i'm also not sure of the extremes in temperature that onion seeds can tolerate so that is something you can study up on. :)

pH 5-7 i'd say it depends upon how close to 5 it is as that seems rather low and too acidic (some plants will be ok with this onions probably want it more neutral 5.5 to

6.5. garlic would probably do better in 6.0 - 7.0 range.

you'll find out. :)

songbird

[T]

Nothing.

[songbird]

T wrote: ...

get some fresh seeds. i'm just harvesting the seed tops from the Tokyo green onions and they are a very acceptable green onion.

my regular onions (red, yellow and white long day onions) are flowering so they won't cross pollinate much with the green onions because those mostly bloom earlier. i won't keep any seeds from the green onions that are blooming now but i like to leave the flowers on the plants because the bees really like them.

songbird

[T]

Maybe a hint, but a had a ton a green been seeds left over from last year. I planted them in a feral bin to see what would happen. This is about may 7th or so. Since I started soaking the seeding areas, yesterday, some of the green beans started coming up. But only in the area where most of the water ponded up when watering.

I see what seeds walmart has left.

[T]

Sow on the top or cover them a bit?

[songbird]

about an inch deep seems normal (it should say how deep on the seed package). keep evenly moist but not sodden. are you far enough north that you could grow long day onions or should you pick something else?

the thing with planting this late is that for bulbing onions you'll get tiny bulbs started and then they'll die back. once they die back then you can lift them and keep them in storage for planting back out next spring.

if you are planting green onions you can put seeds down anytime this summer and you should get a fall crop or let them overwinter and then you can harvest in the spring into the early summer. if you want further seeds for continued growing let some of the plants flower next year (don't harvest or trim them unless there's some dead leaves to remove) and set seeds.

what i've been doing is using the plant's life cycle to guide when i plant the seeds. with the green onions i just harvested seed tops so taking that as a clue i can plant those seeds any- time now. by contrast the long day onion bulbs i have are just now flowering so they won't have seeds ready for a month or so (which means i wouldn't be planting long day onions now).

songbird