If you struggled in the past with growing
onions in your garden successfully, I know I have, if that's you, then this video will explain a couple of
key mistakes that you might be making. And they're not the mistakes
that you would think. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening,
where it is our goal, my goal, to help you grow a greener thumb. And
onions really, let's think about them. They're some of the most basic things,
at least at a grocery store. Piled high, they fly off the shelves. We use them
in practically all aspects of cooking. But man, sometimes they
can be challenging to grow. That's why we're going to talk about,
first of all, how does an onion grow? You have to understand that otherwise
what's the point. And then number two, what type of onion should you
grow? And then number three, we'll talk about the different ways you
can start an onion or plant an onion. So without further ado, cultivate that Like button and I will
personally call upon the onion gods to bless your harvest so you have Epic big
bulbs. And let's get into the video. The first thing to understand
is how an onion actually grows. So when you plant the seed in the
ground, leaves come out up top, roots come out below. And these leaves
are your energy producers for the plant. It's not going to create a large bulb if
you don't have nice and healthy leaves. Now think about how it's actually
growing. The leaves are coming out. Those leaves sort of wrap around
what eventually becomes the bulb. So each leaf is a layer of the
onion. That's how it actually works. So when you get to about 13 leaves or
so, that is the so-called perfect onion. You've got 13 layers in
there. But what happens is, based on the length of the day, that's when those leaves start to take
the carbohydrates that are in the leaves and start throwing them downwards into
that bulb. So it starts to bulb up. So if you don't have a lot of
leaves, healthy leaves, large leaves, then it's not going to send a lot of
energy down into the bulb and you're not going to get a good onion. So you know the healthiest leaves
produce the healthiest bulbs. But there's also the distinction
of type of onion, the categories. And really the categories
break down into where you live. It's how far away you
are from the equator. And that's how long the days are in the
summers when you're growing your onions. So you have your short day onions,
your intermediate day onions, and your long day onions. Long day would
be the furthest away from the equator. Think about places like Alaska.
I was there on my 30th birthday. The days were easily over 12 hours long. And that's what you want if
you're growing a long day onion. Now where I am here now,
down in San Diego zone 10b, we are in the short -
potentially intermediate - but
really the short day onion range. The reason the day length matters so
much is because it triggers the bulbing process. So for example, with short day onions bulbing starts to
trigger when the days reach the 10 to 12 hour range. So that makes short day onion
varieties good for about zone 7 plus. Intermediate day onions, those are around 12 to 14 hours or so, and they're good for zones 5 to 6, but
these are also the most adapted onion. So you can push them outside of that zone.
Then you've got your long day onions. These are the ones that you
can grow in zones 6 or below. You're going to start them
in late winter/early spring
and they're going to need at least 14 to 16 hours of sun to start
that bulbing process. So let's imagine, you know where you live, you know the
type of onion you should grow - short, medium or long. Now you have to
decide, do I plant it from seed? Do I get transplants
or do I buy onion sets? So let's start out with the most
simple, and that would be onion seeds. What do you get when you grow onion
seeds? What benefits? So, first of all, you're going to get way more variety. There's just simply more available when
you purchase packs of seeds than there would be with transplants or with sets. You're going to start those probably
indoors or in a greenhouse and then you'll plant them out in late
winter/early spring. And then they're also
going to be the cheapest. Seeds are just cheaper than
buying transplants or sets. Now the downside is time. It's going
to take you a lot longer because again, you're starting it from seed. You're not starting it from an already
grown point. Next up you have onion sets. These are very small bulbs. It's a commercially grown product where
growers will let it bulb just slightly and then they'll store it over the
winter and then you can plant it out next spring. Now the thing with sets is
most sets are long day varieties. So if you grow a set in a
shorter/intermediate climate or latitude, you're not going to get it to bulb
because it's never going to reach that minimum threshold of day length
to actually start to bulb. And so a lot of you may have bought
sets from your local nursery, but you're in a warm climate
or a shorter day climate. And then you just get green
onions and it never bulbs up. The reason why is because the set was a
long day onion and you just never got to that long day. Finally, you have your
transplants. Now when I say transplants, I don't mean you started from
seed and then transplanted in. I mean you go to a nursery or you
buy online actual onion transplants, and then transplant those in.
Those are grown again from seed. Commercially grown product. And then what they'll do is they'll pull
it when it's about four or five leaves or so, and then ship it out and you can
go ahead and plant it into your garden. So you're skipping a lot of that
seed starting process there. Again, variety selection is
probably going to go down. You still have to make sure
you choose the right variety. But you can get a little bit of a head
start on the season if you grow from transplant. So my recommendation would
be if you're in a short day zone, so we're talking zone 7 plus, I would go with either starting
from seed or from transplants. I might skip the sets unless you know you
have sets from a short or intermediate day variety. If you're growing
in an intermediate zone, I would probably still stick
to the same rules there. But then if you're growing in a long
day zone up in those northern latitudes, then you can do any of the three that
you want. Personally, I used to do sets. I used to make sure that I got
the right sets for my area. Now I'm moving more into
seeds and transplants myself. So there's no onions in this video because
my onions are starting from seed in my house right now. So hopefully this explained a little bit
of the intricacies of growing onions. It really is a fun crop.
There's so much variety there. Maybe in a future video I'll do different
types of onion varieties that you can try out. But you've got yellows, whites,
reds, all sorts of different colors, shapes, sizes. Beautiful,
beautiful varieties. But again, you just have to know how the plant
works in order to make the best growing decision and have those huge Epic harvests
of onion bulbs. So with that said, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
