Pull onions from purchased seeds
This is the easier and faster way to propagate onions. There are many different types of seeds on the market:
- firm vegetable onions
- yellow onions, like the Zittau yellow or the Stuttgart giants
- white onions, like the pearl onion White Queen
- red onions, like the Brunswick dark blood red
- Spring onions, like the Japanese ishikura
- Shallots, like the yellow moon
also read
- Propagating onions - instructions for the ambitious gardener
- Can bulbs bloom?
- What to do with sprouted onions
The seeds are sown densely in rows in spring. The location should be sunny and the soil loose and rich in nutrients. After a while, small onions, the so-called onion sets, develop.
These are harvested, dried and stored in a cool place over the winter.
If the onions are to be placed in the bed in spring, they should be placed in a warm room about four weeks before the date of sowing. A temperature of around 20 degrees activates onion growth.
Then you put the onion in humus-rich, well-drained soil in a sunny place. Now it is time to wait, water and weed. It takes a few months for the self-grown onions to be ready for harvest.
Grow onions from home-grown seeds
This variant takes even more time than growing with bought seeds, as a spring onion first has to form a flower that sheds seeds.
Harvest seeds
If the young onion has developed a flower, it must ripen completely. If the inflorescence becomes dry, it can be cut off. So that the seeds are not lost, a paper bag is put over the flower and the stem is hung upside down to dry. The seed pods remain hanging in a dry and cool place over the winter.
Only in the spring of the following year are the seeds shaken out and sown in the bed.
The further procedure is the same as for purchased seeds.
Which seed is capable of germinating?
With the abundance of harvested seeds, not all specimens are capable of germination. There is a simple method to separate the good seeds from the bad ones.
- Fill a bowl with water.
- Pour the seeds in and watch what happens.
- Germable seeds sink to the bottom of the bowl, seeds without a germ float to the surface.
- Collect the empty seeds from the surface of the water.
- Now pour the water through a sieve, the germinable seeds remain.
- Let the seeds dry for a while and then sow them.
