Spring Onions

Overview

Spring/salad onions  Allium cepa                       Rotation group -     Roots

Spring or salad onions are much milder than bulbing onions and this makes them the ideal addition to fresh summer salads. They are quick growing and three or four sowings spread out over the gardening season will supply enough young Spring/salad onions to meet anyone’s needs. Pickling onions are grown for the small onion bulb that forms at the base of the plant. Pickling onions are raised in the same way as summer sown Spring/salad onions except that they prefer a less fertile soil than the rest of the onion family. The pickling onions are harvested at the end of summer and allowed to dry off and ripen before pickling them in vinegar.

Varieties to choose (sold by Kings Seeds): -

• White Lisbon (AGM) – the traditional spring onion. Long white stems with bright green tops which are slow to form a bulb.
• Ishikura (AGM) – Japanese bunching type of onion. Long white stalks with short green tops. Does not form a bulb. Fine mild flavour
• Paris silverskin – dual purpose. If you like a good sized bulb on ‘spring’ onions pull them young, or leave to mature and crop as small onions for pickling.

How to grow

Sow

Spring/salad onions are raised from seed sown in the open ground. The earliest sowings can made around mid- February directly in the soil in drills ½ “/12mm deep. Sprinkle the seed thinly enough along the drill to avoid overcrowding the seedlings but there is no need to thin out at a later date.  The soil may not be warm or dry enough to create seed bed this early in the year so cover the soil with cloches or a plastic sheet for a couple of weeks before hand. If this isn’t a practical proposition an alternative method is to sow a cluster of 4 or 5 seeds in modules filled with fresh seed compost. The module raised seedlings can then be transplanted outdoors when the weather conditions permit.

To maintain a regular supply sow in rows that are just long enough to meet your own needs at 3 monthly intervals: March/ April and May/ June all according to which part of the country you are gardening in.  A last sowing can be made iduring Augus/Septembert using a winter hardy cultivar (‘White Lisbon – winter hardy’) for an early Spring crop.

Growing on

The Spring sunshine can make conditions very hot under glass or plastic always remove the cloches or any other form of protection in the mid-morning  on sunny days and put it back by the mid- afternoon to conserve the warmth.

Aftercare

There is very little to do other than ensure that the plants are clean and healthy. Allow the seedlings to grow on and only watering them if the soil shows signs of drying out. Hoe regularly to keep the soil around the young plants loose and weed free.

How to Harvest

Spring/salad onions grow quite quickly and are ready to harvest when they are about ¼ “/ 6mm thick they shouldn’t be allowed to get any thicker than a pencil because after this stage they will lose some of their sweetness and become too strong to be eaten raw. Pick along the row according to size and to keep up the supply always water along the plants to settle soil back around them

Issues

Spring/salad and pickling onions are generally trouble free. They can transmit/suffer from onion white rot so always fit them into the rotation plan.