- This is about growing onions, unsolid onions in fact,
sometimes called spring onions. You grow them in exactly the same way, well, not quite exactly but so similar that we can
cover it all in one film and I'll point out the
differences as we go along. In this case I'm filling a tray with some homemade compost that I put through a very rough sieve. You could also use any
multi-purpose compost. It doesn't have to be
specifically seed compost. The main thing is that there's
some drainage capabilities. The worst thing for seeds is compost that lies wet and soggy. I'm pushing it in because that means I can get
a decent amount of compost. When compost is light and fluffy, it's better to firm it in
before sowing or pricking out and that way you've got a nice firm medium which won't all fall
apart when you push it out at planting time. So the seeds, this is some
home safed seed actually which makes it a bit different. Not so perfect looking,
got little clusters but lovely, nice seeds there. I've filled a tray with compost. You want reasonable sized cells of four centimeters, just over an inch so that there's a decent
amount of compost there. Onion seedlings are surprisingly hungry even though they look
quite thin and meager. So I'm being not exactly precise here but I'm aiming four, six,
eight even, seeds per cell. And it can be that you could go even more. If you want spring onions, you could do up to 10 seeds per cell and you'll be planting
these out as a clump, not thinning them out. And well, you've got your
bunch of spring onions in that case. But even if it's bulb onions, they are very happy growing together being planted together as a clump. And what it means is you get say four, five medium onions per little block. Instead of if you thin them down to one, you would get one big one. And on the hole it works
out more efficient. You seem to get more onions and you certainly get a bigger crop compared to the amount
of compost you've used and the amount of space needed
in a greenhouse, for example. So this is February late winter and it's about as early
as you wanna sow onions in the first half of the year or you could've sowed these, one can sow them in late August right at the end of summer
to plant out in early autumn. Or sow them direct in
late summer, early autumn. And that way they stand
the winter as small plants. And I do that every year
actually for spring onions. There are some out in the garden now which are looking really well. They've had quite a bit of
frost on them in cold weather but onions are very tolerant to that. You don't need to worry
about cold on onions. It's really, you do want
to get them going early 'cause what happens then is
they have more time to grow. To some extent anyway, they're triggered by daylight
so onion bulb formation begins around the time
that day start to shorten. Which means that if you can
get your onions in the ground in good time, you have more chance of getting a decent sized bulk 'cause they would've put on
quite a bit of leaf and root. General plant growth before the energy goes into making bulbs. And on that note, just
one quick word on sets. You can also grow onions from
sets as opposed to seeds. And the sets do not want to go in early because they are already a
slightly grown small onion. And if you plant them too early, it triggers that small onion into thinking it's been through a winter and then it will flower
rather than making a bulb. So sets, do not plant them
before the spring equinox. That's my advice. Where as seeds you can
sow even in late winter as we are here. And having some of the trays, I'm giving a light,
gentle water from above with a fine rose on the can. This compost was quite moist
so I'm not watering a lot. Sometimes you might
need to water a bit more and then let them drain and put them wherever you
want to let them grow. Basically in this case it's winter so I'm bringing them indoors to the house where they're warmer. For planting out, onions are hardy plants. They resist some frost, cold weather. And you can pop them in early spring. It's 13th of March today. So this is a good average
time to plant them. And I'm making holes for the modules, which I sowed them into
four or five weeks ago. And they're multi-sown as
we saw at different times. So here we have four,
five, six onions in a clump and I'm putting them in quite deep. This is a variety of normal
bulb onions, yellow onions. You could plant them when
they're bigger than this. On the hole, I find that
plants do really well when they go in quite small because that gives them more
chance of establishing quickly with less root disturbance. And you can see how quick it is. You make a little hole, pop it in. I'm also leaning on the bed a bit as I'm sure you've noticed. And all I'm doing really
is pushing the compost down so that doesn't matter. And that now is a row of onions is eight plants times average five, probably 40 onions potentially there which are gonna be then fleeced over to grow on for harvest in the summer. The onion family has huge versatility and look at these onions here which I sowed in late August last year. This is now April so they're
coming up eight months old and I'll multi-sowed them
in a clump six to eight. Even some of them had 10 seeds actually. So a lot of onions there. I've already taken out one or two big ones from most of these clumps and this is what undo's. Thinning out as I harvest. So twisting out the
largest one there or two and then to get them ready for table. All you need to do is peel off
the outer sheath like that. And you have a lovely spring onion. And the reason these look
a bit yellow and grossy is cause they have been here all winter. So these have just be standing here without any protection whatsoever. No fleece or mush or cloche. They have frost and hail
and lots of rain and wind. And yet, you know, they're
now really growing strongly and giving lots of lovely food. So that is one option you have. Sow them in late summer. In this case, August. (scallions rustling) Here we are, 10 weeks later. And these are the clumps of onion seed that I sowed in February,
planted in March. So it's now 14 weeks since they were sown, 10 weeks since they were planted here. They've had some fleece over to help them through the cold weather of late March and April and it was quite frosty. They don't mind being frozen but keeping cold winds off
speeds their early growth so that's how already
they're a good size onion. Suitable, very suitable for
harvesting as spring onions. Now, if I wanna keep these
all to grow into bulb onions, which they will do. Its a bulb onion variety stir on. And I'll let all these grow. I'll have nine. In this case there's nine
here, quite small onions rather than say four or five medium-sized. Or if there's only one or two really big. So it's your choice entirely. So what you can do at this stage is gently pull and twist, cajole some of these
onions out of the clump to thin them out. And that gives a harvest
of a spring onion, even though this is a bulb onion variety. 'Cause at this stage of
growth, spring onion, basically it's an immature onion which hasn't yet bulbed up
so it's more stem than bulb. And you can see, I can just
peel off the little sheath off, old leaf there and
that's nice spring onion. And I'm gonna actually go through and do all the these in
the next week or 10 days. We're going to have heaps of spring onions 'cause I want to get all of these clumps which are for bulb onions
down to four or five. And then we'll see them late July probably in about another two months, how they've swelled up in their final stage
of growth making bulbs. (scallions rustling) Now it's middle of July
and its onion harvest time. Five months after they were sown these multi-sown blocks of
onions are ready to come out. How do you judge when to harvest an onion? Do you see how the tops are all gone flat? I did help them a bit. They'd gone down more
than a half, two thirds. And for me that's a sign
that harvest is approaching. There's always a few that tend to stand up and it's good to push those ones over so that it softens the neck. Sometimes otherwise they
can develop a long stem and a neck that doesn't dry very well. So I've pushed the remaining ones down so they're all down now. The neck of each onion is
bent over at right angles. And even in the last few days actually, I've noticed the bulbs swelling a bit. (horse neighs) It's a very joyful site. So when you can see that not only is there a good size onion there, but they're starting to color up as well. The tops are still green. So it's not a question of waiting
for the tops to go yellow. And you can see how four
or five onions in a clump quite close based even where we've taken
some spring onions out back in May, we're getting hell of a harvest here. It's gonna be fascinating
to dry these off a bit and then weigh them to see what there is. So in terms of drying, what I'm gonna do is put them in a crate in such a way that you wanna have it so that there's some
air around the leaves. This crate is now gonna go undercover on a pallet in my compost bay. It could go in a greenhouse, it could go in garage on a table. That's all good. Or if your climate is quite reliably dry you could put it, your crates of onions, or even just loose onions on the soil. You could just leave them
like this to dry in the sun. So it's up to you how you do it. But they do want to
have a period of drying with air around the bark of the stalks which are still green so
that they cure and dry and then they will store well through the winter, even until the spring. Last year, we harvested onions like this in the middle of July, and I got them nice and
dry over about a month. And then with the dry tops, bunch them, hung them up in the house and we were still using
them the following April. So from harvesting now, you've got a nine month
period of usage for the onion. What a great vegetable to grow. It's fun to grow, lovely to harvest, and they store. You've got sweet food over
a long period of time. (scallions rustling)
I should be working, but I'm too busy watching a man grow onions, even though I know I will NEVER do this in my own life. I need help.