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| Overwintering onions |
Sunday, October 6, 2024
There are many perennial alliums. Alliums include garlic, chives, leeks, and onions. Fall is the time to plant perennial alliums like potato onions, walking onions, shallots and garlic.
Garlic, leeks, shallots and onions will continue coming back year after year unless you pull them. If they are not big enough the first year, leave them and they will come back bigger the following year. For the biggest onions and cloves, fall is the best time to plant. You can plant in the spring but your garlic cloves will be much smaller and your shallots and onions will have many fewer and smaller bulbs.
There are also Egyptian walking onions, potato onions, and shallots which are considered “multiplier” onions. They continue spreading out from the single bulb you plant. As long as you leave a few bulbs behind, they will come back the following year. Egyptian walking onions are usually pulled and used fresh, but they can be conditioned for a couple of weeks and stored for months like potato onions. Egyptian walking onions
If you grow garlic, you will likely find that the following year you have garlic sprouting again even after harvesting the bulbs. Many garlic bulbs will have little “bulbils” that become detached from the bigger bulb when you pull them. These babies come back up the next spring. I also had many bulbils from my hardneck garlic flower tops. I will plant them this fall too. It'll likely take at least 2 years for them to get large enough to harvest. From the bulbs I harvested this summer, I will take the biggest cloves and plant those for next year's harvest.
In my Zone 7a, here is the recommendation on fall planting times:
September through October plant Egyptian walking onions
Mid-October until mid-December plant garlic, potato onions and shallots
Plant about 1" deep in soil rich with organic matter and well-drained, 6" apart for individual cloves or bulbs. I already added the phosphorous and potassium my soil test said to add this spring so I will put a handful of blood meal for nitrogen under each bulb at planting. If you haven't done a soil test, you can add a balanced fertilizer in each hole as you plant. In the spring, continue to side dress with nitrogen every 2-3 weeks when growing resumes. If using blood meal, use 1 cup per 10 feet of planting. Alliums prefer a soil pH of 6.5-7.
I have issues with voles in my garden. They are supposed to be repelled by blood so I am going to use blood meal as my nitrogen source when planting to see if that helps. I have also planted daffodils and creeping thyme all around my beds as they re supposed to deter voles.
To protect against a severe winter freeze, apply a few inches of mulch over the bed.
I ordered potato onions from Southern Exposure last summer and them last fall. Since they did not grow much, I did not dig and divide them. I will add compost this fall to see if that gets more growth next season. The Dutch Red Shallots they substituted for half of the potato onions did pretty well so I have dug them, will divide and replant here in the next month. If my shallots are happy in the bed, I should get 4-12 shallots from each bulb come spring. Potato onions increase by 3-8 fold in weight from fall to spring, but mine were very small when I planted them last fall and did not do much. Since mine are still on the small size, I will likely get a larger bulb and a smaller bulb from each one planted if they are happy with the garden bed conditions.
There is a risk if there is a really hard winter that you can lose many or all of your fall planted potato onions and shallots. Using mulch can help protect against the loss. Southern Exposure recommends planting the biggest bulbs in the fall and saving the smallest bulbs to plant in the spring as an insurance policy.
In our Zone 7a, I have not had an issue with an extreme winter killing my bulbs, but I do use mulch in all my gardening beds.
I wanted potato onions since they multiple underground and have a long storage life. I'm guessing that it will take a couple of years to get the potato onions really going so that between them and the Egyptian walking onions, I should not have to buy cooking onions any longer.
Sweet onions do not store for long so I will still buy one of those every month or two for burgers. I did also order sweet Egyptian walking onions that I have not gotten. I had only 1 survive the first year. They'll be an experiment to see if I can substitute them for sweet bulb onions for burgers. It's fun to try new things in the garden!
I have many, many bulblets from my existing Egyptian walking onions that I will also plant. These walking onions have the taste of a white onion. Each bulblet with produce a full size Egyptian walking onion bulb (about the size of a leek) if planted individually so they have room to grow. You can plant them 2-4" apart. Since I have so many top sets, I am going to plant each topset instead of breaking them apart. I'll plant them around 12" apart since they will grow a cluster of onions.
Alliums are very nutritious, easy to grow, and tasty. Try some in your garden this year!
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