# Onion question



## smaj100 (Oct 17, 2012)

Hey Guys,

We thought we had lost our onion crop from last year and left it in the garden over winter. We are in NW TN so we had a very mild winter. For whatever reason I never turned over that section of the garden last winter after we harvested everything. So we were surprised this spring when I went to plow and till the garden to get it ready for spring planting to see 5 gorgeous rows of onions standing up. They are growing incredibly fast still semi small bulbs. We went to the garden yesterday to put the taters, beans, new onions and cucs in the ground and noticed 1/2 of the onions sets that are standing up and super tall have flower bulbs on them. Should we cut these seed pods off, let them flower and hit the ground in the garden? We have plenty of room in this garden its really used only for our root veggys, onions, garlic and taters.


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## Starcreek (Feb 4, 2015)

I'm interested in the answers you get to this, smaj100. I live in southeast Tennessee, and I had the same thing happen to me! First, a disclaimer: I am not a very good gardener. I am better with livestock than plants. But, that said, I got a few onions from my garden last year, but not much. We were in a severe drought all year. But this spring, I had a whole bed of onions come up, volunteer!

My potato patch did really terrible last year, so I only dug a few before I gave up. Now I have 3 beautiful rows of potato plants coming up!

So, I'll be looking in here to see what somebody might recommend to you about your onions.


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

Since it is the second year for the onions, they will go to seed and in general not produce a large bulb.

I'd let them go to seed, cut the heads off and gather the seeds then plant them in the fall for spring onions next year.


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

I don't know if this will help, or not,because they are going to want to go to seed, but I saw this video a while ago. It says if you cut the stalk back, the bulbs will get larger.


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## terri9630 (Jun 2, 2016)

You could always do both. Onion seeds are tiny and just a few onions will give you tons of seeds.


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## bacpacker (Jul 15, 2011)

I put out 3 rows of Onion slips last year and thought I harvested the all. Late winter and I have several onions coming up fro left overs. Lots of them are getting seed heads, plants look good and looks like the bulbs are coming on. I'll pull one in the next couple weeks to see what they look like.
We dug our taters last year but missed a bunch of them. I have nearly a full row that came back and look as good as what I planted this year.


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## timmie (Jan 14, 2012)

a friend of ours had onions growing year round,. he called them multiplying,guinea nest , and bird;s nest onions, he passed away a few years ago and i have been trying to find somebody with these types of onions. any body have any idea where i might could find any of these especially the bird and guinea nest?


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## bacpacker (Jul 15, 2011)

timmie said:


> a friend of ours had onions growing year round,. he called them multiplying,guinea nest , and bird;s nest onions, he passed away a few years ago and i have been trying to find somebody with these types of onions. any body have any idea where i might could find any of these especially the bird and guinea nest?


I've never heard of those two. But you can find Egyptian walking onions in various seed catalogs.


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## Danil54 (May 8, 2017)

I lucked out one year buying green onions at holiday time at the local grocery store. I used only the tops so left a couple inches and plopped those into the ground. A couple of them had branched out into 6-7 separate bulbs with a reddish-purple skin. I just break them apart and replant.


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## Flight1630 (Jan 4, 2017)

I like eating onions 
My 2 cents. Lol


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## bacpacker (Jul 15, 2011)

We eat onions nearly every day. Sometimes even for breakfast. I love to stir fry some onions, pepper, and smoked sausage, then dump several beaten eggs over it all. Keeps me going for ours.


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