The onion experiment did not go as well as I would have liked, but it was not a complete failure either.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

When about half the onions lay down their leaves, I pulled them all up. And since the weather at the time was very cold, wet, and muddy, I had to wash the clay off in a wheelbarrow.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I planted two varieties of yellow onions, and those performed best. In the pictures, you can see the two full wheelbarrows before washing. Red and white onions did not perform as well, and shallots were a failure. And whilst I got a substantial number of bulbs, all varieties produced mostly medium to small bulbs. The reason for all the negatives was simple – the weather.

The white onions were strongly affected by (probably) the same fungus that nearly wiped out my garlic. Whatever I have will need to be used up first because it will be most prone to spoiling. The red and yellow onions were not affected as much by this, with just a few bulbs being moldy and rotten. Shallots were not affected by the fungus at all, but they produced the tiniest bulbs of them all.

The drought in the spring is to blame for the small-sized bulbs. I had to prioritize my water usage, and I could not use as much water as I would like to water the onions because I needed the water for the sprouting beans, pumpkins, potatoes, and peas. The plants thus did not develop as strong foliage as was needed for subsequent bulking up. When the weather changed, the plants actually got too much water all of a sudden. Without sufficient foliage for photosynthesis, it was mostly useless, and it facilitated the spread of fungi.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

After I cleaned them somewhat, I bound them up by the leaves and hung them in my garden shed to dry. When the weather warmed up, I opened the door on both sides for air to circulate. Today, the weather got colder after an insufferable heatwave again, and I can barely walk due to a sore heel (likely due to too much walking), so I took them down, sorted them, weighed them, and tallied the numbers. Here they are:

White onions “Snowball” ~2 kg
Red onions “Carmen” ~3 kg
Yellow onions “Štutgart” ~ 7kg
Yellow onions “Sturon” ~ 4 kg
Shallots & assortment of tiny onions of all kinds ~ 3 kg

Overall, circa 19 kg, which is enough for our needs for the whole winter, provided not too many spoil. Approximately 4 kg of tiny shallots and tiny onions will be pickled, the rest has been put in mesh bags and hung back in the garden shed for the rest of the summer and fall. In the winter, I will move it to the cellar.

Lessons learned:

I will try onions from seeds once more, but this time I will buy seeds from a trusted supplier.

I will probably not bother with white onions anymore at all, and I will prefer to grow yellow ones. I will have the raised beds that I now fill with reasonably clean soil and that I can disinfect, but I will reserve those for the more expensive garlic.

I will try shallots again, but I will have to see to it that they are well-watered should there be drought again. The same goes for the other variants – I might plant less, but water more in the early spring for the same harvest (weight-wise). Small-ish onions have the advantage of avoiding the perpetual half-an-onion-leftover, but they are kinda contrary to getting the most food from the least amount of land.

As far as the companionship of onions with carrots, about that I will write when the carrots are done. So far, 2/3 are still in the ground. In the meantime, I sown spinach and peas where the onions were, for a possible autumn harvest.