THE ULTIMATE TOP 10 LIST for Growing Onions in the Backyard Garden

the way an onion grows you want the most vegetation possible out there to make the biggest bulb don't go cutting your onion tops don't worry about them if they're breaking or getting too big or sprawling all over the ground that's what you want you want a lot of greenery what's up lazy dog fam up everybody out there is having a wonderful day it's a scorcher out here today you hardly get any rain yesterday just a little sprinkle not enough to do anything so we're still in bad need of some rain we got several things we need to do in the garden today we got these red onions behind me here they've been in the ground forever we need to pull those up start letting those cure i think we've got a few doozies in there so it'd be interesting to see just how big of a red onion we grew then we're going to go over the top 10 my best top 10 tips for growing big onions things i've learned over the years and then lastly we're gonna do a little raised bed garden so i've got three more of those little fire ring raised bed setups i'm gonna put them underneath the pecan tree over there beside those other ones and finally get some of these herbs in the greenhouse plant it so here's our red onions we've got three rows two different varieties and then two different treatments on these first two rows here so these first two rows are a variety called chianti and then this row here is a variety called red rock with the two chianti rows the first row here we trim the tops at planting this row here we left alone so we can compare those two scenarios and we can also just compare the chianti to the red rock now what's unusual about these red onions this year and this could just be a varietal thing because i've never grown either of these varieties is that these lasted a lot longer or took a lot longer to mature than our yellow onions usually red onions are the first thing to harvest because they want to bolt badly on you and we usually end up getting those out of there first but hadn't been the case with these and haven't had a single one of these bolt which tells me these are really two good varieties as far as being bolt resistant red onions now we're showing some of the signs that they're ready to harvest some of them have fallen over like that guy right there and the rest of them here the tips are starting to die back some not completely yet but but it's time we got to get these things out of here i need to use this plot here to plant a cover crop for the chickens so we got to get these guys out of here they might hang around and be fine for another couple weeks but it's time so just like we did with our yellow sweet onions we're going to take these just going to pull them up lay them on the soil there let them cure in the sun here for a few days like i said we don't have any rain coming so that should be just fine they'll cure a lot faster sitting in the sun and if we put them under the barn so let's flip them up lay them on the soil and then we can kind of compare the varieties and treatments here [Music] and there we go they're all flipped now these are the biggest red onions i have ever grown we usually do all right with red onions but most of the time i would say they're around the size of a couple of those right there nothing like these monsters here so some of these are absolutely huge now there's a reason why this row farthest from me has fewer onions and i'll discuss that in a minute as we're comparing these treatments here so the one farthest from me there that's the chianti that we trimmed the tops right at planting the second row is chianti with no trim tops and then we've got red rock right here in this third row so first let's talk about this whole top trimming deal now we're talking about trimming the transplants before we plant them we're not talking about trimming the tops once the onions get up and growing so what we did is we trimmed them right out here in the field right before we put them in the ground that was a big mistake so trimming them like that right before you plant them just really stressed [Music] hey truck just really stressed those transplants and we lost a lot of transplants and that's why we have fewer onions in that row than in the road that we didn't trim now i did some experimentation with my backup transplant some that i had left over and it does seem like trimming the tops on the transplants or the seedlings does help make them a little tougher and a little more resilient but you want to do it several weeks before you intend on planting don't do it right before you're putting these things in the ground especially if it's the least bit warm outside but as far as any size differences between the ones we trimmed and the ones we didn't i can't tell anything i mean we've got big onions in that far row there we've got big onions in this middle row here really no significant differences in size so i would say you know trimming the transplants doesn't make them a little tougher a little more z in the ground but it's not going to make a bigger onion as you can see here in this second row we've got some really huge red onions there and we didn't trim these at all do anything to those in that row we trimmed them right before planting lost a bunch of them but the ones that stuck around the ones that made it did make some nice onions too now another thing that's interesting to me about this chianti variety is the different shapes of these onions so usually either got a round onion or you got a granite style or flattened onion but these are all a little different some of them like that one on the end that's really big it's really flattened almost looks like a yellow sweet onion and then some of these are a little more round kind of like a red onion you might see in the grocery store so there's a good bit of size variation excuse me not size shape variation here as far as some being round some being flattened and some kind of being in between all right so we kind of broke down the results of that trimming versus not trimming experiment now let's compare these two varieties with both of those rows that weren't trimmed now if i was writing a dissertation on this i'd weigh and measure the diameter of all these onions for both of these varieties and we'd look at all the results and have some really concrete comparisons here but i'm not going to do that we're just going to use the eyeball test so from the eyeball test here this red rock variety still one of the biggest red onion varieties i've ever seen so a really really good variety really nothing wrong with it at all there's a few small ones in there but most of those are big big red onions but i think this chianti variety here edges it out ever so slightly we've got more big onions from that row and the biggest onions are bigger than the biggest onions for this red rock variety but nothing wrong with this red rock variety at all just not quite as big as these chianti onions here so i grabbed the three or four biggest ones for comparison sake here so this is the red rock variety these are the chianti onions man these things are heavy it's all i can do i can't grab more than three or four of these things they're just so big i can't wrap my hand around them but you can see these are a hair bit bigger a little bit bigger these are still big red onions just not quite as big as these so these chianti onions here they just i don't know this is amazing to me these are bigger than any of the yellow sweet onions we grew some of those dp sweet onions were huge but i believe all these are bigger now i'm not going to weigh these because if we weigh them then we're kind of stuck to that weight but if we don't weigh them then like i said with those other onions they're a little bit bigger than a softball now these things will be bigger than a beach ball in a few weeks and one more thing you might be wondering how to spell chianti and i might not even be pronouncing that right but it's c-h-i-a-n-t-i we got these from nec'd.com this is a hybrid short day variety so not everybody all over the country can grow this onion but if you live in a short day region you should definitely give kianti a try so overall we did real good with our onions this year especially considering the fact that this was the first time we've grown onions organically also the first time we've ever grown no-till onions and it was fun to compare all those different varieties they didn't look that great in the beginning but i think that was mostly weather related once they got up and going we eventually got a pretty nice harvest from all the varieties there weren't really any stinkers there those texas legend onions didn't overwhelm us but most all the varieties we tried were pretty good now before we get into our top 10 list here let me say this i appreciate all the people out there instagram facebook youtube all the content creators that are trying to teach people how to garden some of these people out there are spreading some bull jive about planting onions and growing onions you got to be careful what you see out there on the internet some people mislead you into doing things that you don't need to do when you're growing your onions so i've got a top 10 list here of the things you need to do to grow nice onions you know if you don't want to grow monster onions that's fine but you'll grow some nice onions you may have a few monsters in the bunch as well so without further ado let's get into the list so we're going to jump through these pretty quick as we get closer to onion planting time later this year we'll dig into the details of these tips a little more we're just going to kind of bounce through them right now because most people are harvesting onions or have already planted their onions so tip number one gotta pick the right day length variety so either short day intermediate day long day depending on where you live if you're not sure i'll put a link below if you're watching on youtube to a blog we have that has a map that tells you you should be planting short day intermediate day or long day onions got to pick the right day length variety for where you live number two hybrid onion varieties will always yes i said always and i don't like to use absolutes hybrids will always outperform open pollinated onion varieties i've tested this time and time and time again hybrid onions always make bigger onions always do better than your standard heirloom or open pollinated onion varieties for example those timon onions we grew this year the round yellow onion did way better than the texas legend another round yellow onion the dp sweet onion we grew this year the flattened organic style yellow onion did way better than any of the 1015's i've grown in the past it's chianti and red rock these two hybrid varieties did way better way better onions than any of the red creoles i've grown in the past most people aren't saving onion seed because you don't want onions to go to seed you want them to not bolt so they store well so unless you're really intent on saving onion seeds grow hybrid onions they'll do a lot better for you than some of those older op varieties with number three grow your own plants if you don't have a seed starting set up you don't have a grow room that's fine go buy plants but growing your own plants is cheaper and you're going to end up making bigger onions because you don't have that stress period between when those onions were pulled when they were sitting in the store somewhere or sitting in a box being shipped to you you don't have that kind of delay time you're going straight from the greenhouse or your grow room right into the ground and i promise you if you grow your own onion plants you will grow bigger and better onions number four plant at the right time that means not too early not too late now i'm not real good at telling people in the middle or the northern part of the country when they should plant their onions i just kind of know my area down here this short day region so for us it's pretty much any time in november i'd say early to mid november is ideal i planted in late october for i've done all right with that but i still think mid to early or early to mid november is perfect for us i planted as late as december and january before there's a wide time frame there for when you can actually plant if you want to maximize your onion harvest for us down here at least it's early to mid november so you can plant too early you can plant too late figure out what that ideal time frame is for your area and aim to get them in the ground then number five give those onion transplants when you put them in the ground give them a balanced fertilizer initially when i say balance that means something with relatively equal proportions of np in case of those three numbers you see on the fertilizer back we used a 855 here so not exactly equal as far as the npk goes but it worked pretty well so get something that's close to balance there and that's what you want to give your onions early number six once the onions get up and going once they have several leaves on them heavy on the nitrogen i mean use a fertilizer with just straight nitrogen you don't need any phosphorus or potassium just a nitrogen fertilizer now if you want to be organic you can use that nature say 1300 like we did it works great you don't care about being organic you've got several options you know chilean nitrate ammonia sulfate lots of different options out there but go heavy on the nitrogen once they get up and going number seven water heavily onions are heavy feeders they like a lot of nitrogen they also like a lot of water you about can't water them too much so we use drip irrigation because we can give them water right where they want it if you get plenty of rain that's good or if you've got a good overhead watering setup that's fine too just make sure you give them plenty of water while they're growing number eight stop feeding the onions or stop fertilizing the onions when they start bulbing so when you see that ground cracking around that onion stem you start to see that bulb enlarge don't fertilize them anymore number nine and this is the one i see people giving the most information on don't mess with the tops of your onions once you put them in the ground a lot of people get worried about their onion tops getting too long and kind of bending and falling or spreading all over the ground that's perfectly fine we don't touch our onion tops we don't mess with them at all the way an onion grows you want the most vegetation possible out there to make the biggest bulb don't go cutting your onion tops don't worry about them if they're breaking or getting too big or sprawling all over the ground that's what you want you want a lot of greenery that's going to make a bigger bolt don't go cutting your onion tops leave them alone once they get going if you want onion tops to eat grow you another row of spring onions or bunching onions or something like that before you're bulbing onions don't mess with the tops and then finally number 10 which is probably the hardest one you got to keep the weeds under control and this is tough especially for us down here because onions are in the ground so long we plant them in november in this case we're harvesting these in you know mid-may so they're in the ground you know what six months out of the year if not longer and that's a long time to keep the weeds managed on something now some people grow them on plastic that's a great way to manage the weeds we just kind of try to stay on top of it come in here and scratch around with a hoe and keep the weeds to a minimal you get a lot of weeds in your onions that's going to rob a lot of the nutrients that you're trying to give to those onions and so the onions might not be fed as well as they should be you know or would be without weeds the other thing i've noticed over the years a couple times i've let the weeds get out of control on my onions and the weeds get taller than where the onion bulbs are sitting and it creates this kind of moist damp environment around the bulb and i had a lot of rotting of the onions that year so weeds are going to rob nutrients they'll also make things to moisture around that bulb when it gets close to maturity and you can have some rotting so do your best to stay on top of the weeds all right so that's my top 10 list i hope it was helpful for you if you disagree with anything on my top 10 list that's okay please do share that in the comments below i'd love to hear why you think any of my points doesn't make sense or doesn't apply to your particular growing situation and as i mentioned earlier come probably late september this year when we're starting onion seeds in the greenhouse we'll go into a lot more detail on some of these points here kind of elaborate them on a little more show you exactly how we do it i just want to give kind of a broad overview you can bookmark this save it share it whatever you want to do but i think these tips if you've struggled growing onions before i think following these 10 tips will definitely help you be successful all right now for a little raised bed fun so underneath this pecan tree here where it stays fairly shaded i've got three of these little fire rings we set up last year one of these we've got some snapdragons abram wanted us to plant some snapdragons they're hanging in there i don't water these much as i should i kind of forget about them i need to start watering them more regularly they'd probably look a little bit better but we've harvested many bouquets of flowers off those snapdragons we've got our horseradish right here and over here we've got some thyme and some garlic chives and then today we're gonna add three more kind of right in front of these right in line with those other three so why are we adding more of these little raised bed setups we got a plethora of in-ground garden where we could plant well there's some things we don't want to plant a lot of we just need a few plants of them and they don't really fit into our garden rotation especially if it's a perennial and it will be there you know year after year last year we tried growing some herbs in the garden in rows some of it worked well some of it did in the basil which you can see i think right there worked really well and so we're continuing to grow that in rows some of the other stuff didn't work well at all the targon didn't do well in the garden because for some reason stella our lab loves the smell of tarragon and goes and gets in and just wallers all in it so we need that on an elevated surface so she can't just roll all in it the sage didn't do as well in rows on drip tape in the garden so some of this stuff that we want to have access to doesn't do as well in the in-ground garden on the drip like we do all our other vegetables and that's why we're gonna just plant a few plants in these raised beds got some helpers that showed up with a snack is it popsicle time already it's not even lunch yet that's the perfect time for a potluck what do you think ty ty you ready let me you gotta measure some stuff oh you got measured out okay come over here come over here let me show you what to measure measure how far apart those circles are there so we know out where to put them what you got 24 yeah 24. okay check these other two right here what you got right there 24 again just one yeah okay now you gonna measure the mater plants see how tall they are two meters tall that's pretty tall i don't believe it's quite that tall yet it may get there so we've got our three fire rings here and then we got some soil last time i used the jungle grow mix they didn't have that so we just went with this this was the cheapest thing they had i also bought some of this black cow i thought about putting that at the top a little bit just for a little more moisture retention because sometimes this stuff right here drains almost too well all right let's roll them over here put them where they need to go okay you measuring that one titus how tall is it look at the numbers three three there's another number there's three what an eight three eight okay we got work on our numbers a little bit don't we 45 45 okay so this is the county line brand the track supply brand versus the tartar ones we got over there but i think we got them close to equal there we had to work around this route right here but that'll be close enough all right let's get some dirt and put in here so we may have miscalculated how much soil we're going to need but we'll see how far we can get here we may need another bag one of those on the end there now get it out five five friends five hundred scoops yeah [Applause] oh gosh i think you're gonna need another one more [Applause] all right tata's got a sage plant there so we got cilantro dill tarragon sage and oregano so probably plant a little bit of variety in each bed brooklyn's got her claw gloves now she's ready t-rex you got claws on both hands i know you want some there you go okay i'm ready let's do this let's kind of split it into thirds playing three different things in here so we'll draw like a little peace sign almost like that okay so put sage right there we'll put tarragon right here and we'll put some oregano right here okay is this all the sage no i can get more i got a few more plants mom let me dig in the record and see oregano hey hey dad let me dig a little hole for these okay you dig a hole with your bone okay all right there we go so that actually worked out okay considering the amount of plants we had we had a few sage plants left there we got this one pretty full with dill and cilantro and that stuff will start going to seed in this heat but hopefully being in the shade here it'll get big enough to get a few decent harvest off of it and use those deal plants there to make some pickles and then over here all this stuff should do pretty well in this spot the sage tarragon and the oregano my oregano didn't germinate that well i might have to um buy me a couple plants from the store when i go get a little bit more soil and i don't know what we'll plant in this one but it's available so i'll go get some soil and uh we'll figure out what to put in here who knows what it could be probably not anymore herbs but uh we'll find something i've tinkered not right now buddy in just a second it's the other wagon tight it's the one at the very end walk around take 632 yep okay okay so we've got those six raised beds here underneath that shade tree and i like having a few in that shaded spot because some things we plant in those don't like a lot of full sun right i've also tinkered with the idea i haven't really kind of solidified it completely and you guys can let me know if you'd like to see me try this but taking one of those whole 30 by 35 plots in the dream garden and doing this really neat raised bed set up with all different kind of shapes and sizes i've had several companies contacting me about a raised bed sponsorship so i'm kind of working through that i haven't decided if i'm going to do it yet but you let me know if that's something you'd like to see as a part of our channel i think it would work well for us because there's some things let's take for instance that celery we just grew yeah it was cool to grow a whole 30-foot row of celery but we don't really need that much celery you know probably four or five plants would have been better so there's some things we probably need to scale back on and not plant a whole rug i say this all the time like travis how many basil plants have you planted over there well i i like my hedgerow basil it's certainly let's just how many basil plants there's a lot like 30. but that that has some really basil that has some pest uh management juice as well and it looks pretty and smells good exactly how many cucumber plants cucumbers i can't help myself on cucumbers or tomatoes and stuff but yeah we got a bunch anyway i'm thinking of that idea y'all let me know what you think i think it would look pretty cool and uh we'll see if one of these companies wants to partner with us and we can give that a try so i think that's a good idea i'm glad you brought that up i was going to say a lot of our friends do not have gardens like we have and i think for a beginning gardener that this is a quick setup and is not as intimidating yeah and now those things aren't cheap they're what 70 bucks a piece you know i was thinking that though but i would like to say something cost comparison no that that's not cheap but i also just for the flowers i bought 30 each right so i think it's kind of i mean the cool thing about those as opposed to something you make out of wood if you build one out of wood you really can't move it but if some reason i decide that spot's not any good or you know i want to move these i can basically pull that structure up and then kind of transplant the plants into another spot and pick all the dirt up yeah so i like the fact that those are you can't move them if you needed to yeah and i've seen some different things that you can actually pad the bottom wood so you're not having to use as much dirt yeah i think like pine straw maybe somebody did some rocks things like that but if you factor in your time how much it would take how long would it take you to actually build something yeah it's not a bad deal no it's not a bad deal talk about some things that you can grow in that with the root structure not having to be so deep well i mean you could i thought about using one for like just a an odd maybe there's a pepper variety where i just want one plant or something like a real hot pepper i think it would be perfect for that um and we grow more tomatoes than just what would fit in there but i think you could grow tomatoes yeah you could grow tomatoes in there so this pro you could probably do one squash plant in there i i like having it just it's just one especially that one we have left over if i find a pepper variety i haven't tried or i want to grow i can just stick it in there turmeric we did turmeric in it last year do you think you'd grow potatoes in it yeah you could certainly grow potatoes in it really well so i think that would be a neat option lettuce would be perfect let us in this spot being in the shade yeah because our lettuce in the sun had bolted very quickly so yeah a lot of good options there and like i said all all the other plots i have are all in direct sun so it's nice to have a shady option here if i need to extend the growing season or i got something that's not wanting to be in that extreme heat we can put it in the shape i'm going to help titus he's having a um we got a meltdown going on i mean he needs to feed the chickens of pumpkin and that takes priority yeah that's right so i hope you all enjoyed the video today getting those red onions harvested letting those cure we had some pretty nice ones there going through those top 10 tips of growing onions i hope those were helpful for some of you guys out there and hopefully they will allow you or help you grow even bigger onions next year and i'm really liking our little raised bed setup back here just easy to do didn't take but 15 minutes to set up yes probably a little more costly than doing it with wood but you know time there's some value to save a little bit of time there and now we've got some extra space there we can grow some of this stuff into shape if you're watching on youtube make sure to check out our affiliate links below a lot of great companies that we use in our gardens here at lazy dog farm we've got some coupon codes for some of those companies so you can take advantage of those discounts don't forget to go check out our website lazydogfarm.com where you can find hats shirts recipes our garden blog with a lot more onion growing information all kind of good stuff over there if you did enjoy this video make sure to subscribe hit that notification button like and share and we'll see you next time right here at lazy dog farm [Music] by the beauty of your life

Channel: Lazy Dog Farm

Views: 69,518

Keywords: backyard gardening, organic gardening, sustainable living, vegetable gardening, vegetable garden, homestead, homesteading, homestead garden, organic food, small farm, sustainable agriculture, home garden, sustainable farming, sustainable food, organic garden, backyard garden, home gardening, garden advice, garden tips, garden techniques, gardening tips, garden seeds, garden varieties, gardening, garden, how to garden, grow your own food, kitchen garden, clean food

Id: CDm4L-Qplxo

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2022