A Bushel of Home-grown Onion Sets from one Ounce of Seeds

I’ve never had as much fun and satisfaction growing onions as I have since I began using home-grown sets. I grow about 45 pounds of sets each year in an area 3 feet by 5 feet and it takes only 1 ounce of seeds. The seeds cost about $3, but the sets I get are worth 20 times that!

You probably can’t use 45 pounds of sets in your garden, of course, but I bet you have neighbors and friends who would gladly buy some from you in the spring.

Here’s how I get such a big, money-saving harvest from a 3- by 5-foot area:

I sow onion seeds in mid-July—about 3 or 4 months before the first hard freezes are due in my area. Timing is important! Onions grown for sets should grow about 4 months before a hard freeze kills the tops. If I planted earlier, the bulbs would get bigger; if later, they wouldn’t have enough time to form marble-sized bulbs.

Where you plant is important. I pick a section of the garden where I recently grew a weed-beating green manure crop like peas, beans, or buckwheat.

Onions like to grow fast, so fertilizer is important—especially in midsummer, because by then the rains have carried many nutrients deep into the soil.

I’ve found that Ebenezer, Stuttgarter, and Buccaneer seeds produce excellent sets. These three are yellow, long-keeping varieties.

I get my onion seeds from a mail order company because I can find all of these varieties, and I can order an ounce or two of seeds at a good price.

To plant them, I rake the soil of the bed one last time to get it as smooth as I can. Then I sprinkle the ounce of seed evenly over the bed. The seeds land about 1/4- to 1/2-inch apart..

I firm them in with a hoe, rake up a 1/4- or 1/2-inch covering of soil from outside the seedbed, smooth it over the seeds, and firm them down again.

Don’t be worried about getting the seeds too close together because that’s really what you want. A slight crowding will help keep the sets small. You don’t want to grow big sets because those go to seed when you plant them next spring.

I weed this bed just like my other wide rows. The first step is crucial—I drag an ordinary garden rake across the bed when the plants are about 1/2 inch tall. After 5 or 6 days I drag my In- Row Weeder over the plants. I use the In-Row Weeder a few more times at 3- or 5-day intervals.

About frost time, the tops, though small, start to die. They’ll grow a little bit beyond a frost, but not much. By the next freeze the tops are usually brown and have fallen down.

I pull them up and spread them out to dry for a week in a warm, airy place such as a porch or carport. Don’t wash the onions, and don’t worry about the tops. They’ll just dry up and fall off.

The last step is very important. Put the best sets in small mesh bags. Never load a lot of sets or small onions in a big bag. They’ll pack too tightly and the onions in the middle won’t get the air circulation they need to keep.

Once I’ve got them bagged, I put them in the root cellar where it’s cool and dry. Any cool, dry place in your house should be okay, too.

Check them once or twice a month, and get rid of sets that sprout or rot.

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