How to Grow Large Onions Perfectly Every Time

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel i'm so glad you guys decided to tune in for this one because in this episode we're going to be revisiting a topic that you guys have all been asking about and that is how we grow giant onions you guys have constantly been begging me to revisit this topic because about three or four years ago we filmed our first video on how to grow giant onions it was a complete growing guide and the information is still as you know still as relevant as it is uh you know it's still as relevant back then as it is today and so i want to just kind of uh revisit that topic bring together all the different tips and tricks we've talked about in the past and really just help you guys to grow bigger onions because one of the biggest things that i see so many people bringing up in the comment section is i've done a so i've done so many things that i thought were right and turned out they were not right can you just help to kind of remove the gray area around growing onions help just make it super simple for me to understand and also help me to get onions larger than a ping-pong ball so so hopefully that's the goal if i've done if i can do those two things if i can clear up the gray area and all those question marks and get an onion for you that's larger than a ping-pong ball i've done my job i've done everything that i've set out to do so that's what we're going to do i just i love doing these videos because i think they really can help a lot of people out and yes we've already talked about them before so if you've seen those videos i apologize but there's a whole lot more viewers that have come onto this channel that have no clue about those videos and um you know while i always encourage people to go back and watch our older videos the reality is a lot of people don't a lot of people subscribe and they watch all the newer videos and forget about all the rest so i hope you don't do that i hope you do go back and and binge watch our other videos those are all going to be helpful and very informative but for those of you that that are subscribers that have subscribed in the past year and have no clue about our giant onion growing endeavors well then welcome to the channel and this video will get you caught up so for context this is what we're working with here this is our onion bed it is four feet wide by 12 feet long that's our standard bed length in the bed we applied our cores we use a method called core gardening we use it in all of our beds all of our beds except our perennial strawberry beds we can't but all of our other beds that have annual turnover we apply core to that is simply a 10 inch deep trench that we put a a straw bale like a rotted straw bale we break that up and and put it inside the 10 inch deep trench it's a foot wide by 10 inches deep we apply that straw there that rotted wet straw we cover it up we plant on top of it all of the beds get coors we don't water these beds we only water in case of a super super super emergency and that's when we do water but we don't actually irrigate these beds so these beds have not received any water and this is how large the onions are getting this onion here is easily a pound and a half our average sized onion i would say is about three quarters of a pound a pound so what is the first thing that we can do to guarantee larger sized onions the first thing is called the golden rule of onions it's the difference between a long day short day and intermediate day onion when you're picking out seeds you want to make sure that you're picking out a seed that grows in your area if you are below the if you're below or south of the 32 degree latitude line the 32 degree latitude line is what delineates between a long day zone and a short day zone because it's how long the days are onions are photosensitive they bulb based on the daylight the amount of daylight that they get so in a in a location south of the 32 degree latitude line you need to be growing a short day onion this means that you're going to be growing an onion that will bulb with less sunlight if you're going north or above the 32 degree latitude line you're going to need a long day onion this means that you're going to have a bulbing cycle that is geared more towards more sunlight now it's a very common misconception that short day onions will be smaller because they get less sunlight this is completely false this is completely not true and a prime example of that are vidalia onions they are giant onions that can be grown from a seed in a short day zone they come from vidalia georgia which is about as south as you can get and they are giant there's a total misconception again the bulbing cycle is the only thing dictated by the the sunlight amount so if you're in a short day zone or a long day zone you can still grow giant onions but you have to look at where you're at on a map now that raises the question what about intermediate day onions well an intermediate day onion is an onion that's bred for both long day and short day zones however if you are in a in a in a zone that you could grow an intermediate day onion this is like something very close to the 32 degree latitude line where it's like i'm not sure if i'm a long day or i'm not sure if i'm a short day these intermediate day onions tend to be smaller they'll still get sizable they'll still be something very respectable when it comes to onions but they won't get as large as a specifically short day or a specifically long day so even if you're close to that 32 degree latitude line and you're not sure or if you're someone that has grown an intermediate day onion before try just saying okay i'm closer to you know i'm closer to a long day's own than i am a short day zone therefore let's try growing a long day onion it's worth a shot because if you can make that jump and you can you know you can actually go into a specific a specific variety that is a long day or a short day you just will have bigger onions it's proven fact because they're bred for that the next thing is when it comes to seed versus set so as i just said you know when you're picking sets you want to pick a short day or a long day seed or a short day or long day variety well that's when it applies to seeds a lot of people grow from sets i never ever under any circumstance recommend growing from sets and this is because sets are grown and then they're put in storage the problem with that is onions are a biennial biennials mean they flower the second year garlic shallots chives any of your alliums anything in the allium family is going to be a biennial and this means that when you put them in the ground and they overwinter they go through a storage period or like a dormancy period the next year or the next time they come out of dormancy regardless if it's been a year or not they think that it's been a whole a whole year and they reset and instead of bulbing what they'll do is they'll bulb but they'll also flower that flowering process takes a lot of energy away and that can take away size on the bulb but it can also take away shelf life on the bulb so if you're someone that's looking for long long storage life onions like our yellow and our white our white utah onions and our yellow spanish onions those have a shelf life of like six to seven months it's just absolutely insane when they're cured properly our candy onions they have a shelf life of like three to four months which is still very you know very great for an onion don't get me wrong we'll eat them before then but if you have a flower that forms on your onion like i said not only does that not only can that reduce the size of your onion by about 25 but it also cuts the shelf life by about 50 the next thing from starting from seed is the varieties are so much more broad you know when you're starting from sets there's not a whole lot available to you and when you go down to your local hardware store they might have a yellow a white and a red onion you don't even know what those varieties are they're just marketed as a yellow onion a red onion and a white onion who the heck knows what you're even getting or where they're getting them from and the thing is i've gone and i've gotten sets from the store before to try them and their market they're marketed as a yellow red and a white onion but you don't even know where those even came from they might be a short day onion they might be a long day onion you don't even know because they don't show where they were actually grown they don't show the actual variety of them they're just they're super generic and that's because at the you know at the the hardware store or your big box store they're not looking out for you they're looking to carry something that you're going to buy and the fact of the matter is a lot of the people that sell those onions they don't do their due diligence and they don't do their research and therefore they don't get a variety that will actually specifically go grow for this area the next thing to consider is spacing we space our onions out four inches apart spacing plays a huge role into how large your onions can get at four inches we find our onions are large enough that we're plenty satisfied with their size and they're also not growing into themselves if you space your onions too closely together they're going to be competing for water and nutrients which are two things that that do contribute to onion size the more water you can give them obviously within reason the larger your onions are going to be the more nutrients they can access the healthier they're going to be and the faster they're going to grow which means more leaves and the larger the onions can be so those things do play a big role into how big your onions are going to get so the more they're competing for that space the more they're going to be competing for those two resources meaning the smaller they're going to be so within reason too close and they're going to compete and too far and it's going to be wasteful you can space your onions out 8-10 inches apart but they're not going to grow a whole lot larger than you do at 4 inches so it's kind of finding that sweet spot now the next secret to growing large onions is making sure that you top them so topping them is very very important if you want larger onions because here's what happens with an onion when an onion top grows up it can become very top heavy and when the top falls over the neck of the onion which is the space in between the leaves and the bulb that's called the neck it can fall over and crimp and when that happens the onion is completely done regardless of how big it is so to reduce how top heavy the onion is we like to come in and prune our onion tops this is something that competition onion growers will do because it reduces the weight of the leaves it actually encourages more leaf production and more bulb you know larger bulb growth and it also will you know just reduce how how much weight is being put on the neck you can see some of these onions here are pretty much ready for harvest they're falling over and we're just waiting for uh for the rest of the onions to fall over before we harvest but a lot of these onions here i'll pick one that you can see this one right here is a good example this one here the neck has gotten soft and as you can see it has completely fallen over now this is about a three-quarters pound onion it's a beautiful onion by all means but had we came in here and kept pruning had we came in here and pruned off all of these leaves here it would have been a whole lot lighter it would have had a lot less weight on the neck and it might have lasted a couple weeks longer but we were on vacation we came back and that happened so we just get what you can get but you know i'm super happy about that size of onion there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever and we'll take that all day long that's a beautiful sized onion for the for the spanish yellow so that's a beautiful size onion not complaining one bit but again you know topping your onions coming through once a week or twice a week when you start to see when you start to see the leaves crimping here's when you start to see this you know where this this leaf coming down is attached to the to the neck of the onion and you see this little bend here come just below the bend and pinch that off pinch this off and discard that and leave this attached to the onion because that way you're going to reduce just how much weight is kind of falling down with the with the onion leaves standing straight up yes it's top heavy but it's not nearly as top heavy as something that's bent and cooked and when it's cooked like that that's really what puts a lot of pressure on the neck of the onion so come through top of your onions and that's going to really expand the life expectancy of your onion the next tip to getting beautiful large sized onions is weed control if you have weeds in your bed the weeds are going to be competing for your onions when it comes to nutrients and water these are things that are going to contribute to smaller sized onions so just keep that in mind that the more you can weed your beds the more weed free they can be the better all right so one of the very final tips that i want to leave you guys with is fertilizing we talk about this all the time and having proper soil fertility is one of the most important components to having healthy plants and ones that grow quickly so what you want to do is you want to come through with a very nitrogen rich fertilizer we use trifecta floss on our garden we use it in every single uh bed that we grow in so regardless of what we're growing in but nitrogen is very important and trifecta plus has a lot of nitrogen which makes it a great fertilizer for us it's a great all-purpose it has nitrogen phosphorus potassium trace minerals and things like that but use what works for you just make sure it has a lot of nitrogen blood meal is another great example fish fertilizer is another wonderful example just make sure that you have a lot of nitrogen because the secret to getting large onions like i said is lots of leaf growth the more leaves you have the bigger the onions are going to be and so often people focus on phosphorus thinking that phosphorus well you know your your onions are like a bulb right so i got to focus on root and bulb development which is phosphorus it's just not the case phosphorus only develops roots and the problem is if you give them phosphorus it's not going to give your bulbs anything to grow with that's the nitrogen component the more leaves you have the bigger they're going to be so there you go there is everything you need to know or everything you probably should know about growing giant onions now i know that i probably have not touched on every single question and concern that you have but if you do have some post them in the comments box below and i'll try my best to answer them make sure to like this video if you did make sure to subscribe if you're not yet already we got ton more content coming out and uh yeah that's about all i got for you guys today all right grow bigger go home everyone catch you later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 431,540

Keywords: growing onions, growing guide, onion, fertilizing, watering, Premiere_Elements_2018, growing giant onions, organic, Migardener, how to grow onions, spacing, weeding, giant onions, harvesting, gardening

Id: RHMqt9TmK3M

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019