Trial & error

applications of liquid fertiliser or homemade sheep poo and seaweed concoctions. Watering, especially in early summer when the bulbs are swelling, is important.

“The onion will succeed year after year on the same ground,” according, again, to the Brett’s Gardening Guide, though Whanganui gardener Graeme Musson’s vege-growing Dad had a better way of putting it. “Dad used to say, ‘Onions where they ever was and taties where they never was’.”

When sowing direct, don’t bury the seeds any deeper than 5mm, and when transplanting, don’t drop them into planting holes as you would leeks, as this can cause onions to grow thick necks rather than fat bottoms. Thin seedlings to at least 5-10cm for small bulbs, or 15-20cm for large onions such as ‘Italian Long Keeper’ or ‘White Sweet Spanish’, which can grow huge (up to 1kg each) if the sun and soil conditions are to their liking.

Depending on where you live, and whether the onions you want to grow are early or late maturing varieties, onions can be sown and planted from autumn until spring. But if you are yet to sow – let alone plant – onions this season, stick to the quicker, more compact varieties such as ‘Pearl Drop’ and ‘Purplette’, or just buy seedlings from garden centres this month. And remember to prepare the soil first!

Of all the home garden trials I‘ve carried out for NZ Gardener over the years, sowing dozens of carrots and courgettes to radishes and strawberries, I have to say that this onion sowing experiment took the most effort for the least reward!

In late August, I sowed 10 varieties of bulbing onion, 10 types of spring onion, four Italian heirloom varieties and two varieties of shallot. The seeds were sown in recycled punnets filled with potting mix, with a sprinkle of vermiculite on top. I kept the pots indoors, on our sunny north-facing stableblock window, and was careful not to let the mix dry out.

Onions are reliable germinators. Most varieties had an excellent strike rate with ‘Red Brunswick’

close to 100 per cent. Keep this in mind when sowing or you’ll end up, as I did, with far more seedlings than space to plant them.

From seed to harvest took a full eight months and yet most of my onions were smaller than a ping-pong ball! Some varieties refused to bulb up at all – I’m ‘California Red’ looking at you – while others took their sweet time and had only just begun to swell by the end of April, when our photos were taken just before the first frosts hit my low-lying vege patch.

I’ve learned my lesson: soil preparation, soil preparation, soil preparation! I clearly didn’t cultivate my soil deeply enough prior to transplanting as, despite regular watering, feeding and mulching to reduce weed competition, most of the varieties grew lovely green tops but these weren’t matched with fat bulbs down below.

More ruthless thinning earlier in the season would also have helped, as by the time I got around to thinning, it was hard to dislodge surplus seedlings without disturbing the ones I wanted to keep.

It wasn’t a complete disaster. The classic ‘Pukekohe Long brown-skinned variety Keeper’ grew as it was supposed to, and ‘Red Rambo’

produced good-sized bulbs in between the scrawnier specimens.

For gourmet onions, I was chuffed with

‘Tropea Rossa Lunga’ ‘Rossa both and Lunga di Firenze’.

Both grew appealing

medium-sized onions with a shallot flavour (delicious roasted and stewed whole).

I had zero luck with the flat Italian button ‘Borettana’, onion or cipollini which failed to germinate, while the miniature white ‘Barletta’

produced just seven seedlings, none of which, despite all my love and attention, made it to maturity. My sowing ‘Tropea Rossa Tonda’ of heirloom produced precisely one onion, which I savoured, finely sliced, in a Clevedon Valley Buffalo Gouda toasted sandwich.

All I can say is that it’s lucky that my husband and I both love pickled onions, because I bottled several jars of cocktailsized ‘Purplette’ (they ended up a pretty shade of pink once pickled), cute white ‘Pearl Drop’, ‘Italian Long Keeper’ ‘Yellow Sweet Spanish’. and Despite their size, they were crisp and tasty and

‘Yellow Sweet I’d sow all of them again. Spanish’ ‘White Sweet Spanish’

and were first to die down (they take roughly 120 days), but they don’t store as well. ‘Zebrune’

My shallots didn’t survive

‘Ambition’ transplanting and showed a distinct lack of its namesake trait, though at least small shallots can be recycled as seed for a second season.

Incidentally, for these photographs, I peeled the outer skins off (with the ‘Pukekohe Long Keeper’, exception of to show the diversity of flesh colours. But don’t peel onions post-harvest unless you are about to eat them, as de-skinning is detrimental to their keeping ability.