Friday, October 29, 2010

Potato Onions

After my unfortunate accident with the scissors last week, I was finally able to get out and plant the garlic.  I'm also trying a new thing this year.  They're potato onions.  Apparently these are what people planted for years.  They are a multiplying onion, that appears to work somewhat like shallots.






I got these when we were in Virginia at the Harvest Festival at Monticello.  They are simply labeled 'white', I got yellow as well.  They were planted just like the garlic.  At the moment, they're covered with a small amount of straw, but will get another covering of grass and chopped leaves this weekend. 





I'm anxious to see how they do.  Years ago, everyone had their own set of onions that they kept planting every year.  Similar to how we now do garlic.  They are rumored to be great storage onions with a great taste as well.  It would be wonderful if that was the case.  I hate growing onions from seed.  They need to be babied for far too long and seem quite susceptible to fungus and other yucky things.  This lazy gardener would love to have something that I planted in the fall and forgot about until July. 

7 comments:

Robin said...

I planted potato onions & shallots last year for the first time. The shallots rotted over the winter. The potato onions came up. The tops never died off and the onions were not large and near the surface, like I read they are suppose to do. I left them go and did not pull them. Which I believe was a big mistake. They now have a bunch of liitle shoots...so, I guess I will mulch them and let them go until spring. Maybe, I planted them too deep. Dan @ Urban Veggie Garden plants them and does well.

Daphne Gould said...

I keep thinking about getting some type of multiplier onion. I haven't figure out what kind yet though. Onions are a PITA and I've yet to grow a good crop. Garlic however is great. And so easy.

farmwifetwo said...

I buy what they call "onion sets". The bulbs but I don't plant them until spring.

I have a lot of stem rot in my onions that I harvested this year. I was very unimpressed with the quality of my sets, and it shows. I won't be buying from the local farm supply store again. I'll order online.

The Mom said...

Robin, I've seen them on a few blogs now. I really love the idea of multiplier onions though.

Daphne, anything is going to be better than seeds!

Farmwife, I've done sets before, but wasn't happy with how they did. The finished onions weren't much bigger than the sets I started with.

Karen Anne said...

I don't know nothing about growing no onions, but a couple of years ago I had an large sweet onion sprout in the frig. I planted it. A few days ago i dug up that rather weedy and neglected area, and got about twenty very tiny onions when I separated the thing. So I fertilized the ground and planted them. We'll see what happens.

The Mom said...

Karen Anne, that is so cool! I love when happy things like that happen.

Leigh said...

I'm really interested in these. I've only tried planting onion seeds once, and those were all a no-show. My sets haven't done too well so far either. I'll try seeds again, but I'm thinking that something like these or Egyptian walking onions might be a good solution. They grow ramps here in the south too, but I've not found any to plant yet. Do keep us posted on how you like cooking with them, how well they store, and how they taste.