Grow your own onions and save money
Image: Thompson & Morgan onion ‘Sturon’ (spring planted)
There’s never been a better time than now to plant your own set of onions. Home-grown onions are easy to grow, flavorful, and often larger than store-bought onions, and they keep well. Best of all, it offers excellent cost performance.
Choose from fall-planted or spring-planted onion sets depending on the season. Here’s a quick overview of each…
Ideal for fall-planted onion sets
A mixed collection of onions planted in the fall provides an excellent selection
Image: Thompson & Morgan onion mix red, white and brown (fall planting)
Thompson & Morgan’s autumn onion set is a hardy variety that has been bred to overwinter under British conditions. They are best planted in September and October when the soil is still warm, and are ready to harvest from June, two months earlier than spring-planted sets.
If you have limited space and want to keep your vegetable garden as productive as possible, you can harvest fall-planted onions as soon as you need space for other crops.
I’d like to order some fall-planted onion sets to get an early start to next year’s growing season. The onion “Senshu” is a safe domestic variety, and the onion “Snowball” has a bright white bulb and has a good shelf life. If you are looking for red onions, ‘Electric’ is the best choice.
The best spring-planted onion set
Popular varieties selected for their good flavor
Image: Thompson & Morgan onion ‘Stuttgarter Giant’ (spring planted)
Thompson & Morgan’s spring-planted onion sets are specially heat-treated for 20 weeks to prevent summer bolt-out and extend the growing season, resulting in higher yields and larger bulbs at the end of the season. Masu. It is planted between March and April and is usually ready to harvest from August.
Onions harvested in late summer can be prepared for storage and used immediately over the winter. If small, expensive supermarket onions don’t suit you this time of year, try larger varieties such as ‘Stuttgarter Giant’ (yellow), which have uniform bulbs, a rich flavor and a long shelf life. The sweet taste and aroma of onions, ‘Kebel Pink’, is a great addition to the mix. If you want to add more vibrant color to your salads or stir-fries, ‘Red Baron’ is a great option.
If you’d like to find out more about growing onions, check out our onion, garlic and shallot advice hub. There are tons of articles, videos, and other top tips. If you want to learn how to grow onions from seed, read our helpful guide.
Chris Collins works as a Quality Control Manager for Thompson & Morgan, where he strives to keep new and existing customers up to date on the latest plant developments and company news through a wide range of media sources. He trained at London’s Royal Parks and wrote for British horticultural publications for over 10 years before joining the Thompson & Morgan team.
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