In my free time today, I'd thought I'd do a little research on some things that were puzzling me in the garden. I had overwintered my Walla Walla and Red Onions this past winter and was happy to see the bulbs had grown significantly larger than they had last year. Within the last month, the bulbs began to bolt and throw up seed shoots. So, is bolting bad on onions? When the heck are they going to turn yellow and fall over? So my research told me these pretty little flowers were not welcome as they are an indication that my onions are now directing all of their energy toward the seeds and no longer the bulb. It also means my bulbs won't get any larger nor store well because the seed stalk grows through the bulb and will rot causing the bulb not to store well.
Bolting Onions
What causes this not so lovely phenomenon? Well fluctuations in temperature... (Those darn summer like days we had last month and then the snow in the mountains the last couple of weeks) or the plants being too large when they were overwintered. I guess this means I will be harvesting onions this week as soon as it stops raining.
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The bunched leeksAnd the Winner of the Dumb Gardener Award Is......
Drum Role Please
Dilemma #2, why aren’t my leeks growing? Well this one is rather embarrassing. I didn’t separate the leeks when I planted them and planted them in one spot as I received them in the pot. I had better correct this problem quickly as summers are hot here in Sacramento and these guys need to be harvested before that time.
So the good news is that with the onions and the leeks moved, I actually have somewhere to plant my tomatoes and peppers that should be arriving any day now. Talk about lemonade out of lemons..
The bad news is we're going to be eating a whole lot of onions over the next few weeks.
<-------- The bunched leeks
What you could do with the onions is let them flower and go to seed (pick one of the species, not both or they will cross pollinate) and then save the seed for next season. When do you plant your onions? I find that I have the best luck when I plant them in late summer and let them grow until the following summer. When the tops fall over it's time to pull them. They shouldn't bolt by then. Leeks on the other hand, we leave in the ground until we need them. Ours even bolted, went to flower and just kept going. We finally harvested them because we need the bed space. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteRachel - Thanks great idea on the seed collection, I hadn't thought of that upside. I planted these last spring with a bunch of others and these didn't come up until late fall as a surprise crop. I'm going to harvest most of these (for the space:)) and save a couple for the seeds. We'll see what we end up with.
ReplyDeleteThere in Cali you could probably plant some of the seeds right away too! I'm going to try garlic soon, so I'll keep this in mind. Glad I found your blog!
ReplyDeletePlants do react with varying weather even in our weather Malaysia. It seems hot and humid.., but the rains do have great effect on plants especially vegetables. ~bangchik
ReplyDeleteWell, your neighbors might like onions, if you get sick of them;) I've made plenty of mistakes in the veggie garden. My attempt at growing potatoes was just ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteChristine in Alaska