Because I have the gardening bug so bad, yesterday I decided to go ahead and try planting some of my onion seeds, with plans to set them out pretty early, protecting them from the cold if I have to.
Last year, I ordered two varieties of onion seeds...Walla Walla and Yellow Sweet Spanish. I had tried growing some of the Yellow Sweet Spanish last year, and they never did amount to much. I supposed it was because I had set them out in the east garden, where the soil gets very hard and dry, and I hadn't done a very good job of keeping them watered.
Since that seed packet was already open, I planted about half of the remaining seeds in a pot and started thinking about where I could put the grow light when they sprouted.
It sounded like a good plan. But I live in zone 7a in Arkansas, and anyone who knows anything about growing onions knows already what I've done wrong....
As a way to spend yesterday's rainy morning, I did some reading on the Homestead and Chill website. The article on
How to Grow Onions: from Seed or Sets to Harvest talked about "short day" and "long day" onions. I had never heard of such a thing. I always thought an onion was an onion was an onion. Not so. DeannaCat included a picture from an article on the Johnny's Selected Seeds website. The Johnny's article did a good job explaining what the "day" designations of an onion variety mean:
Map & Key Features of Short-, Intermediate- & Long-Day Onions
If I had spent a little bit of time learning about onions before I bought my seeds last year, I would have known that neither of the varieties I bought (both "long day" varieties) will ever amount to anything here in Arkansas.
I now understand that since we're south of the 35th parallel, I need to grow "short day" or "intermediate day" varieties. An onion like Texas Yellow Sweet or Vidalia would be better suited for my garden than Yellow Sweet Spanish and Walla Walla.
So today, I started over on my onions. I ordered some "short day" onion seeds from Eden Brothers...
Texas Early Grano. I'm not sure how long the seeds will take to get here, but I figure they'll still get here in plenty of time for me to get them started early like I had originally planned. According to our planting calendar, onion seeds should be planted outdoors in mid-March, so I hope to have my little onions ready to go in the garden by that time.
I guess this is "Stupid Mistake #1 for 2022." I'm sure there will be lots more of them to come.
