Grow BIG Onions With This One Simple Tip!

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my Gardener Channel in today's episode we're gonna be talking about a tip to getting huge onions now a lot of you ask how do I get big beautiful onions and we've done a lot of videos on how to get big beautiful onions from the soil to the fertilizer to the seed selection and things like that but there's a tip that we do to our onions that home gardeners can do that other Farmers can't and it gives you bigger more beautiful onions and that's called pruning let's go all right so you've got onions in the ground you picked the right varieties you got the right type of soil you got the right type of fertilizer your plants are looking great but there's one thing stopping you from getting average sized onions or giant onions and that's preserving the neck now you see the neck of the onion is kind of like the heart of the onion you see like our heart keeps Us Alive well the neck of the onion believe it or not is what keeps the onion alive or really like growing for you you see the neck of the onion is what transports nutrients and water and energy from the leaves down to the bulb and so when the neck of the onion crimps that's what sends a signal to the bulb I'm done growing and I'm ready to go dormant for the winter because onions are a biennial and what a biennial does is it grows the first year stores energy down in either the roots or a bulb or a tuber and then it'll grow the second ear the following year and it will flower and so onions will do that what they're doing is essentially storing the energy in the bulb the thing you're harvesting and so the longer you can keep the neck of the onion able to transport the nutrients and the energy and the water and stuff back and forth from the leaves to the bulbs you're going to have bigger bulbs and so what we want to do is we want to preserve the the neck of the onion by reducing the weight of the tops so here we have some onions that actually fell over prematurely and what you'll see here is that the neck of the onion got soft and limp and it causes the top to fall over and when that happens it sends a signal like I said down to the ball that says I'm done growing I'm ready to go dormant and so even though this onion probably still had another month month and a half left in it we had some really strong rain and some really strong winds roll through here and it probably blew the top over and that's all it took now it's done we might as well just pull it up because it's not going to get any larger and see here see how that neck is all soft you basically whip your hair back and forth whip your hair back and forth with it that is why you want to preserve the neck of the onion because once that happens it's done and why does that happen well generally it'll happen because there's too much weight on the top and uh once the the neck starts to get a little soft all it takes is that top heaviness to crimp over and finish all right so like I said one of the biggest ways that you can actually preserve the life of your onion is by getting the weight of the tops off the neck of the onion you see the neck of the onion sometimes we'll just fall over when it's ready to be harvested but if it falls over prematurely you could have taken some of the weight off and had it last another two three weeks sometimes even a couple more months meaning you're getting that much more growth out of your onion and as a home Gardener you can do that when other Farmers can't right so you actually have something at your disposal which is control right we're not talking about several Acres of onions we're talking about several square feet of onions which is awesome so it makes no sense why you shouldn't do this and all we're going to do is basically look for tops that are long spindly or crimped it's that simple so we're going to come through here and as the onion starts to grow those first leaves the newest leaves get typically the longest and the most spindly these ones are super long right here and so all we're going to do is we're going to come in here and we're basically going to go from where the onion leaves form right where the onions form at the top of the neck coming off the neck you have your leaves each leaf on an onion is actually a ring so the more leaves you have the more Rings you have and the bigger the onion is going to get so coming up here you'll notice here look how long this Leaf is super long super droopy it's old anyways it's getting replaced by New Growth might as well take it off let's hold this over here take all this off taking all that off that's a lot of weight on the top of the onion especially once you add it up right this one right here is totally crimped totally falling right over some world-class onion Growers that is a thing they actually grow competition size onions sometimes what they'll do is they'll actually take they'll actually take tomato cages those cheap little dinky tomato cages and they'll put them around their onions and use those to actually hold the leaves up and support the weight of the onion right so that's something that people actually do now we're not going to do that because they're too close and we're not growing world-class size onions we're just growing some beautiful sweet onions here so I'm just taking some of the weight off and that's really going to help so you notice that little crimp there look at that see that crimp is what we don't want that is eventually going to end the life of the onion now a lot of people ask well what about all the hollow stems right you're creating some Hollow stems when you cut these they're Hollow right and so because they're Hollow won't that invite things like bugs won't that invite things like water and disease and the answer is no it won't the reason why is that this will only stay open like this for maybe about a day or two after a day or two you it'll actually kind of Wilt and close up and that's fine that's actually what you want it to do because once it wilts and closes up it will actually kind of seal it off and it kind of prevents things from pests and bugs and water and stuff getting in there and they'll be totally fine but they'll get the weight off the neck of the onion which is like I said the heart of the onion so all we're going to do here just kind of come in here turn all these up now again we did this when we planted our onions out in the first place to kind of get the weight off the onion but then we're doing it again and you can do this all season long if you want to as long as you've got growth that's producing and you have old growth it's kind of getting wilted you can take off that old growth let that new growth form it's going to keep the neck nice and firm That Just About Does it our onions look incredible super happy with them and I know that from doing this we're going to get probably another two to three weeks maybe even another month out of our onions which is great because they're not even close to being done yet so I hope you guys try this and I really do hope that it helps take your onion game to the next level I know that a lot of people have kind of neglected their onions and neglected pruning them and that's just because you didn't even know about it so now that you know about it hopefully this tip is going to help you guys grow bigger and also I know that you guys are going to be asking about the onion tops what are we going to do with them are you going to let them go to waste no we never let anything go to waste so these onion tops are wonderful what we really like to do is take off some of the some of the drier tips that might be a little more older but take these nice green onions right here and what we do is we throw them in the dehydrator we'll throw them in the dehydrator for 10 12 hours until they're nice and bone dry then we'll dice them up or grind them into a powder and you can use them just as you would things like dried onions dried chives and it makes a wonderful addition to things like soups or even seasoning mixes and it's just another way that you can actually use something that's growing in your garden to help produce some food on your table so don't sleep on that tip they're great and they're really really flavorful I mean I'm not gonna be able to go kiss misses out my garden right now but I'm telling you they have so much flavor in them and uh highly recommend trying it so give that a shot dehydrate those if you don't even feel like using them at least throw them in the compost pile so hopefully this tip helped hopefully you guys enjoyed hopefully you learned something new if you did make sure to throw a like up there subscribe if you haven't already and if you know somebody that you think is growing onions that could benefit from this video share it with them I always appreciate that it's an honor to share these videos with your friends and to uh to be entrusted with someone else's Garden so thank you guys so very much hopefully you guys enjoyed and as always this is Luke from the on my Gardener Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 341,326

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: 6DT9Se_pkSc

Length: 7min 44sec (464 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023