How to Grow BIG Onions - Our BIGGEST ONION HARVEST

well today's video is sponsored by black gold compost company i want to thank the folks over black gold for the generous donation of 18 pallets of black cow cow manure this has really got me and nancy off to a really good start in our our garden this year we can't thank you enough and we've been using this product i've been personally using it since 1980 and it's been a great product for me i highly recommend it well good morning friends it's time to get some onions in the ground we'll be right back after the [Music] break [Music] well welcome back friends what a beautiful day it is here in florida in the middle of december and i'm actually hot i could be happier but anyway um today we're going to get started and get our onions in the ground and and since nancy and i moved down here to florida we are no longer in the intermediate day onion zone we're now in the short day onion zone so i wanted to share with you today a beautiful little yellow onion that we're going to be planting this year which is a short day onion i know most of you already know this but for you folks that are just planting onions for the first time there's there's three varieties of onions the first one is the short day onion which is um an onion that needs 10 to 12 hours of sunlight a day and basically that's anything south of the 38th parallel and what that really means is the deep south so here in the deep south we're a short day onion we get 10 to 12 hours of sunlight a day the intermediate zone is up like right about the middle of the country right across there that's going to give you 12 to 14 hours of sunlight a day and then the long day onion is everything north of that you know that's where they get 14 to 16 hours a day of sun so it's important that you put the right kind of onion in the zone that you're in or they're just gonna bolt so what we're going to do is we're going to plant short day onions today and the ones that we're using is called texas legend this is a sweet yellow onion it's a beautiful onion really it'll um the best time to plant these is about six weeks prior to the last frost predicted frost and for me i'm going to go even earlier than that because uh these things take 105 days for maturity which is about 15 weeks right so um they'll tolerate some short periods of freezing temperatures you know like a couple of days of below 32 degrees but they'll be just fine they'll bounce right back but if it's longer like five six days of freezing temperatures it's just going to cause them to bolt so if you unless you live in florida i would say further north than florida then you want to stick to that six weeks prior to your last predicted frost date the reason that i go in a little bit earlier by planting them in december is because i want to get these things out like harvest them right around the last week of march or maybe in the first week of april somewhere in that time frame because at that point they'll be fully mature and i can get them out on my drying racks out there and get them get them cured before the high humidity levels set in here in florida because with the high humidity levels it'll be very very difficult to try to cure my onions outside in these racks but getting them in the way i do and harvesting them at the time of the year that i do i shouldn't have a problem harvesting them and we'll we'll follow along with these little plants all the way until we do that okay so um with these texas legends you can expect yields of five to six inches uh on the globes of these of these onions so that's a pretty good size onion that'll fit a hamburger won't baby so the the good thing about these onions is once you get them cured they'll they'll store three to four months with no problem at all but anyway here we are texas legends i got these at dixondalefarms.com i know a lot of you always ask me where i got my stuff at dicksondale farms it's um it's online check it out they got a good website there's even a video on there i would like for you to check out if you do go to that website it explains in detail a little bit better what i just did about the three varieties of onions a short day intermediate day and long day check that video out i think it'll help you learn a little bit better about onions but anyway let's uh let's get started on these i'm gonna plant these like i always do i bought a case of them and as you can see they're live plants and they're beautiful 75 to 80 little seedling starts in each bunch and i got a bunch of bunches so what i do with these is i'll take these out and i'll um i like to separate out you've seen me do this before i open up the bunch and i try to take the very biggest onion starts out of that bunch and this is this is a pretty good looking bunch they're all pretty good size but i'll pick out the very large ones like this see how big those are and if you compare them to one of the little small ones so you can see the difference the little skinny one here's a good sized one so what i do with these little teeny ones here is i plant these in little one gallon containers and i um let them grow out to be a bunch of onions you know little green onions and we eat these all along the way as you know salad onions or nancy uses them in all of her cooking stuff and things like that so i don't waste any of them they're all they're all going to be used so let me get these things all separated out and we'll head over to the earth bed and we'll uh we'll plant these things together so be right back here's the difference in what i'm separating out this is what i call a big one as you can see it's it's got some pretty good diameter on that bulb and here's one of the skinny ones see the difference and what i'll do with these are this is the ones i'm going to make the bunch of onions out of these are the ones i'm going to plant in the earth bed over there to make big old hamburger onions so that's how i separate them out right there well i got them all uh separated out this this is trey of biggins it's a bit it's a lot of them and here's all the little ones so i got plenty of little bunch of onions and plenty of big hamburger onions so let's head over to the uh earth bed and uh we'll walk through the procedure of how i put these in the ground so let's head over to the earth bed well here we are over at the earth bed this is the uh the perimeter box bed that we built earlier in the summer and uh we're gonna we're gonna utilize this road right here all the way down and also this road right here um all uh texas legend onion so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna um spread in some some peat a layer of peat in there so give it a little just a little bit of peat because my soil is so sandy so i'm going to give it a little bit of peat to help retain some of the water and the moisture and then i'm going to add in about a two inch layer of black cow cow manure all the way down on top of that peat on both beds then i'll take my little cultivator and i'll cultivate that all in and mix it real well and and i'll also add in bone meal because i want the bone meal to promote that root growth i really want a lot of root growth here so go heavy on the bone meal and i'll cultivate the bone meal the cow and the peat all together nice and smooth then i'll grate it out with my grading rake and smooth it out where it doesn't have any low spots in it that collect water and cause rotten problems in the onion and then i'm going to use my old seed template i like to plant my onions about five inches apart no closer than five inches and i use this little template y'all seen me use this many times before can you see that okay okay here's my template it's on five inch centers it punches a hole in the ground about an inch deep and i'll put my onions in using this template and that gets them nice and spaced out and it makes a a good even row for me it's a little deep to plant it in from what you're probably used to seeing people plant onions they usually just plant the um just barely put the root in the ground but i'm going to actually put this down about an inch deep and to get them to where they stand up nice and vertical then i always come back later after they get growing in about three or four weeks and i'll wring them in and we'll go through that when that time comes but i know you've probably seen me do that on some other videos on how to grow onions but and this is the way i do it i've always had great success with it i learned this when i was just a little kid from my daddy about ringing into onions so we're going to do that again and right now i just need to get started because i got a lot of work to do so let's roll [Music] [Music] and [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well there we go me and nancy got 900 uh texas legend yellow onions planted a day so we'll be back in the days ahead and um we'll watch the progression of these right on up to the day we uh today we cure them over into drying racks but right now we're going to get them watered in it's very important that you keep these moist not saturated so you want to keep don't let these dry out you want to check this water moisture in this soil every morning and for me that's when i'm going to be water i'm is in the morning so we'll get these watered in and um i guess we'll be back here shortly when it's when these have got some growth and they're they're just doing something and we'll show you what they've done and and pretty soon it'll be time to ring them in and we'll go through that process with you too i'm sure you've seen it on some of our other videos but we'll just keep on going with this whole process so we'll be back soon see you then well our texas legends have been growing for about three weeks now they're really making some good progress the the onions in the earth bed are doing great as well as the ones over in the little uh containers that we're making uh you know a little salad bunch of onions out of but these are the these are the earth bed onions that are going to grow out to be the nice big bulbs that will eventually dry out over in the drying racks but i just wanted to give you an update today to show you how pretty they're coming along looking good well these are the uh the little texas uh legends that we put in the little containers you know to to make into a bunch of onions and we got a whole table full so they're looking really good and really they're not that far away from a time to where we can actually start cooking with them and eating them in salads and things so i'd give these about two two more weeks and uh they're gonna be ready for the table so i'm really pleased with these and we'll keep up with this progression of these uh beautiful texas legend onions all the way to the day we cure them and put them in the pantry so we'll be back in a few weeks and give you another update then well our onions have been growing for 10 weeks and as you can see they're really getting some good progress and if you've seen any of our other onion videos you'll always remember us what i call ringing into my onions and all i'd use is an old kitchen knife that nancy uh donated and i bent the top of it 90 degrees so it's got about an inch and a half flange on there see and i go right up to the the onions and i just ring in around the base of that onion and expose that bulb get that soil back away from it real good and that allows that bulb to swell up and get get the nice big you know hamburger sized onions that you're really looking for and this is an important step in the process so always wring in your onions when uh you do that and at this point after i get them uh ringed in like that i'm gonna side dress all these onions with some blood meal to give it a little bit of a boost of nitrogen because you remember 10 weeks ago when we planted these we gave it a heavy dose of bone meal which is a good shot of phosphorus but right now what it needs is a shot of nitrogen to get the tops going and get everything on this plant nice and healthy so let me side dress them and uh we'll water them in and we'll be back in a few more weeks and watch the progress of these bulbs and now that we got them uh ring ringing in the bottoms so let's get to it all right i got my blood meal this is an organic nitrogen source i'm going to take a handful of the blood meal and all i do is go right around just to side dress each one of the onions real carefully they don't take a whole lot maybe uh maybe a teaspoon for each one of the onions and they're off and running well our texas sweet onions are about the halfway point they're um getting some good height as you can see they're getting pretty big and the bottoms are starting to form up the nice beautiful bulbs on the bottom we run them in one time that's really all we needed to do and uh they're really getting somewhere now so we'll be back in the days ahead and we'll watch the development of these all the way that they go into drying rack we'll see you soon well our yellow sweet onions texas legend are really doing great as you can see they're waste time to me right now and they're doing good if you take a look close up here you can see a couple of these onions showing the end and they're starting to bubble up really nice they're getting um they're as big as a baseball right now so we're looking forward to the days ahead as these things continue to grow and continue to get bigger and bigger this is a really sweet tasting onion i'm looking forward to harvesting these big boys and enjoying them on a sandwich so we'll be back in the days ahead and we'll be looking for sign that these are ready to harvest so we'll be back soon well the day's may the 19th and we planted these onions on december the 6th so due to math they are now ready they're starting to lay over as you can see the the top start to fall over like this that's a telltale sign that it's harvest time so today we're going to get these onions up out the ground and we're going to get them over in the drying rack and get them drying so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Applause] so [Music] [Music] oh we got her done don't we i tell you what the older we get the harder that gets to do anyway we got the onions up and um we got both uh drying racks are packed out and we we put all the big ones in the drying racks and we're gonna dry them out and cure them and uh we'll be back in about a week and we'll take it to the next step those will be ready for long-term storage then we've got a bunch of the little ones we just saved out the little ones and um we're gonna wash these up and peel them and these are ready to eat right now so we got they're all ready to eat right now but we're just gonna use these for cooking and eating and our neighbor wants some and you know friends and nancy's mama family so anybody that wants some onions we got this is a really good yellow sweet yellow onion that's my favorite onion for cooking with so it's a great cooking onion so we got those ready we we tied up some bunches of the little small ones with a little bind um you know garden twine and what we do with these is we just hang these out into barn where it's it's well ventilated in the barn we got a tunnel barn so there's always a breeze blowing through there but we put the little bitty ones on here and if nancy wants to throw something in the pot on stew or cook something she just goes out and grabs it they will kill her just like they are don't have to do anything else to them just hang them up in the dark cool ventilated space and they'll be fine and they'll last a couple of months like that and once we get these cured and get them set we'll put them over in the four week pantry in our onion drawers we got some quite large onion drawers three of them so we'll fill them things up and we'll put some in bags and share some we should have enough onions that lasts about three or four months you know with no problem at least at least well anyway we'll be back in about a week we'll take a take it to the next step on this little onion journey and we'll get these out of here and trim them out show you how we do that and get them ready for the pantry so we'll see you back in about a week well our texas legend onions have been in the drying racks for only three days i would like to have had a whole full week out here to really dry these out really good but we got 10 days of heavy rains coming and i can't let these sit out and all that heavy rain and humidity or we'll lose all our onions to to rot so what we're going to do today is we're going to go ahead and clean these down and get them ready and i'll just take them into the four week pantry and we'll spread them out in there on the tables and let them finish curing in there but uh that's not a big deal either we'll get them in there and um they only take about another three four days and they'll be ready to bag up but this will be uh um part of the process on uh curing our onions so come on up let's take a look at what we got inside these things okay let's take a look at the onions they look mighty pretty in here they're starting to dry out pretty good um if you take a look at this one you see the tops are browned i'd like for them to they're still kind of soft see and flexible i would have liked for that to bend more rigid and crunchy you know but it's not going to happen so anyway what we're going to do to all the onions is i take the onion and i cut right above the top of the onion about an inch above it i just cut that top right off then i come to the bottom i get the roots up and i just kind of trim those roots right on off of there and all i'm using is a pair of poultry shears you you know these are cheap and i consider them to be disposable so after i use them a while and they're not just right i just buy some more but anyway that's the process of how i trim the onion down then i just brush off some of this loose dirt because remember i've never washed these and i never will they never are subjected to water and i leave all this paper skin right on here and let it cure with that on there that's kind of helps to protect it okay so that's what we want to get our onions cleaned up to today as you can see on the top of it see it's still wet so that needs to cure out some more the bottom's pretty dry that's good so all we got to do is just get these all trimmed down and we'll get them over to the four week pantry and let them start getting some air to them okay let's get started well we got her done ahead of the rain so we got the uh got the onions all cleaned and um i got them spread out on the on the table here in our pantry and uh we'll leave them here for a few more days i got a whole bunch of these 25 pound onion bags on order they just haven't arrived yet but about the time they arrive these should be dried out well enough to where we can put them up into bags and hang them so we've got a whole bunch here that need to be bagged i've got you know three drawers on the bottom that are packed full and then i just put a temporary piece of plywood on some saw horses over here just to store up another big load of them until the bags come in but all in all we had a pretty good haul these texas legends and you take a look at some of these onions i mean they're they're man-sized that's a nice onion so we're uh going to enjoy these i'm looking forward to sharing a lot of these with our family and our friends that are that come by and uh load them up with a whole bunch of onions so we thank you for watching i hope you enjoyed this journey of the texas legend uh sweet yellow onions together with us thanks for watching and i hope our videos brought some joy to your heart and a smile to your face and so until me and nancy and bing bing see you next time always remember by his hands we are fed give us lord our daily bread amen have a blessed day [Music] good [Music] you

Channel: Hollis and Nancys Homestead

Views: 684,175

Keywords: onion, growing, dixondale, farms, texas legend, short-day onions, onion planting, planting onions, best onions, growing onions, onion fertilizer, feeding onions, weeding onions, harvesting onions, vegetable gardening, vegetable garden, sustainable living, homesteading, homesteader, hollisnancyshomestead, big onions, big harvest, black kow, biggest harvest, dixondale farm, texas legand, the onion, onions, how to grow big onions, how to grow big onions at home

Id: ldXMTh8hewo

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020