Onions - Like Life Itself

Whether you are brewing up a batch of your special Super Bowl Chili or sautéing some vegetables for a casserole, chances are you are going to include some onions in the mix. An onion is not much of a solo player. Save for the deep-fried onion rings, onions are used mainly with other foods to enrich and enhance their flavors. Carl Sandburg, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, once said that life itself is like an onion. Life, or an onion, has a bewildering number of layers, you peel them off, one by one, and sometimes you cry. The Latin word for onion is UNIO, meaning 'large pearl'. And onions are the leading vegetable crop in Texas, with sales between 70-100 million dollars per year. The sweet onion is truly a Texas concoction. The first seed packet of Bermuda onion was planted near Cotulla in 1898. From an onion breeding program started in 1933 came the mother of all sweet onions to follow, the Texas Early Grano, also called the Texas Grano 502. The heritage of the Granex and Texas A&M 1015Y, and the new variety, the Texas Early White can all be traced back to this breeding program. Maybe you would like to grow some yourself!

Varieties of onions are selected for their proper growing region according to the number of daylight hours they receive. Short, intermediate, and long day varieties are available. Since we grow our onions in the winter, our days are considered short (10-12 hours per day). The most prized and widely grown onion is the 1015Y Texas Supersweet. Other short day varieties are the Yellow, Red, or White Granex. A new variety is the Texas Early White. All of these varieties have the same basic requirements.

Onions can be grown from seeds or sets. Onion seed should be planted from mid-October to mid-November. Sow the seeds, covering them with ¼ inch of soil. They will sprout in 7-10 days. After 8-10 weeks you can begin thinning them and using the young plants (scallions) in your cooking. Leave at least four inches between your thinned seedlings, allowing them room to grow their bulbs. All thinning should be done by mid-February. Growing from seed, though not practiced much, is the best way to grow onions.

Most people start their onions from sets. You go to a nursery and buy 75-100 immature onions in little bundles. These starts are planted 2-4 inches apart and about one inch deep. If you want to harvest scallions, plant them two inches apart and then thin them to four inches as you use them. When to plant them is the gamble. Early planted seedlings that are not established at the first freeze could die. If the stem of the onion is bigger than a pencil at first freeze they will likely bolt and go to seed in the spring which produces an onion that has a smaller bulb size, less weight, and shorter shelf life. A good gamble is plant them between Thanksgiving and Christmas. By planting them early, if all goes right, you get a bigger bulb. By planting them later, you face less of a chance of them going to seed in the spring. When they go to seed they are not concentrating their energies on bulb production but on flower production. I would rather have the bulb! It is your gamble. In the spring, when the stalk begins to turn yellow, knock the stems over at the ground level. This helps the maturation of the bulb. A day or two later dig them up and let them dry in the sun, protecting the bulbs with the drying stalks.

Onions need a well-drained soil to grow. Keep the soil moist but not soaking wet. Initial bed preparation includes working lots of manure-based compost and rock phosphate into the soil. One month after planting the sets and then every 2-3 weeks you should top dress with a 1-2-1 ratio fertilizer. Medina Hasta-Gro or Liquid Seaweed used as a foliar feed and soil drench would be ideal. The onion bulb-size is determined by the green growth on top. Each leaf is one ring of the onion and the larger the leaf, the larger the ring. The bulb growth happens at the end of the growing period. Be sure to give them plenty of water at that time!