📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Onions & Late Fall Flowers
- 🧅 Fall-Planted Onion Sets: A detailed guide on planting winter onions (like the Radar variety). Key tips: plant 3 weeks before hard frosts, mulch heavily, and choose a spot where winter snow lingers to insulate the bulbs.
- 🌱 Starting Onion Seeds (Advanced Trick): A fantastic method for starting onion seeds (like Candy F1) indoors. Includes using deep containers nested in soil trays, and the trendy Multi-sowing technique (growing 4 onions in a single cluster without separating the roots).
- 🌸 Flower Off-Topic: Interwoven with the onion chat are beautiful photos of late-season Phlox and Begonias, plus great advice on how to overwinter Geraniums (Pelargoniums) in a cool porch at 45-50°F (7-10°C).
In this thread, you’ll see growers discussing both Onion Sets (small dormant bulbs planted in the fall for an early summer harvest) and Onion Seeds (started indoors in late winter/early spring). Pay special attention to Ekaterina’s post about planting 4 seeds per cup and planting them out as a group—this is known as “Multi-sowing” or cluster planting, and it is a fantastic space-saving technique!
Lyudmila!
Could you share what kind of onion seeds you order? The choice is huge, and I’m lost. My fall-planted winter onions did very poorly this year; I blame the quality of the onion sets (bulbs). I want to try growing more from seed as transplants, although I probably should look for some good sets for spring planting just so I don’t risk a total failure. What do you think? What proportions do you plant?
Good morning! The greenhouses are cleaned out, today I will wash them.
But the flowers have absolutely no intention of preparing for winter. The biggest indicator is the Begonia—it is blooming in full force, and it is usually very finicky.
The Phlox that finished blooming and were pruned back are starting to bloom all over again.
Dusya Kalyazin wrote:
Could you share what kind of onion seeds you order? … My fall-planted winter onions did very poorly this year; I blame the quality of the onion sets.
Natasha! I really love planting in the fall (overwintering sets), but you do have to take a risk—what if something goes wrong? Furthermore, winter-planted onions don’t store for very long; they start sprouting after the New Year. To succeed with fall planting, you must follow a few rules:
- Variety Selection. Some onions don’t tolerate winter well. It’s best to plant true winter varieties, such as Stuttgarter, Troy, Radar, etc.
- Location and Timing. It’s better to choose a spot where the snow cover lingers a long time in spring. Plant about three weeks before continuous freezing temperatures arrive.
- Mulching. Mulching the bed is mandatory, as is covering them in the spring after the snow melts.
This experience applies primarily to the Moscow region; in other regions, you probably need to adjust.
I have bought many onion varieties. From the long-storage onions, all of them are decent, the only problem is germination rates—you have to check the packed-for date on the seeds. The sweet/salad onions are also all good, but again, I’ve had issues with germination. Here are some examples of what I grow (mostly from seed):
Alonso F1: A new generation long-day hybrid. It starts growing vigorously early on, which gives it an advantage even in the harsh continental climate. Maturity is 100–105 days. Deep dark yellow color, stores perfectly. Mildly pungent taste. Seeding rate 100-110 seeds per sq. meter.
Candy F1: Mid-early hybrid (90-95 days). Thin neck, sweet and tender flavor, weighing 60-90 g. Highly recommended for growing into large bulbs in a single season from seed. Designed for fresh consumption and short-term storage. If started indoors as transplants, it reaches massive sizes.
Teton 112 F1: Mid-season hybrid. Outstanding and stable yield, 108-110 days from emergence. Attractive dark bronze skin, white flesh with a greenish tint. Good, mildly pungent flavor. Excellent storability (up to 8 months).
Radar (Sets): A widely popular, high-yielding winter onion variety. Loved for its great taste and good storage (for a winter onion). Bulbs usually reach 200 to 300 grams (7-10.5 oz). Its frost resistance allows it to be grown in central Russia and regions with freezing but snowy winters. It has a tough outer skin that protects it and is highly resistant to bolting (going to seed).
Galya, your garden and your flowers are beautiful, especially in October! It means you haven’t had any frosts yet, while everything here is already killed off and withered. Only the grass is incredibly green, like never before!
When my mood is at zero, a cup of coffee and looking at the flowers brings me back into balance with myself.
Good morning everyone, have a great mood and a wonderful weekend! Work hard and rest well!
Aleksan9ra wrote:
It means you haven’t had any frosts yet…
Lyuda, I still have nine window boxes with Geraniums hanging around the house, one with a trailing geranium on the woodshed, and some are even still sitting in the open ground.
Wow!!! You still have a lot of work ahead of you!
Lyuda, you were answering about planting onions in the fall. Was that seeds or onion sets (bulbs)? If it’s seeds, can they be planted in the greenhouse along the edge, close to the polycarbonate? I’ve never had success with onions from seed in the spring.
Galya, I was writing about planting onion SETS in the fall. You can sow seeds of winter varieties in the fall too, but they need to have at least 4 true leaves before the snow falls.
You probably could sow them in the greenhouse, but you have to make sure they don’t accidentally freeze out. It’s better to sow them in the greenhouse in the spring, around mid-March, under a plastic row cover.
Lyuda, my plan for sowing seeds is to use disposable food containers, 13 cm (5 inches) deep, with as many drainage holes as possible melted into the bottom with a soldering iron. I put in 4 cm (1.5 inches) of breathable commercial potting mix. By mid-April, the roots should grow out through the bottom holes. Then, I will place these containers inside trays filled with 6 cm (2.5 inches) of garden soil. This way, the bottom layer won’t turn sour or get compacted during watering. And it will be easy to trim the roots when transplanting. Still experimenting with this!
As for the Candy seeds, I absolutely loved starting them in small 100g (3.5 oz) cups, sowing 4 seeds per cup (Multi-sowing). I transplanted them into the garden in clusters without separating them, just spacing the clusters out wider than usual. The onions grew incredibly huge! I started the seeds indoors in early March.
Aleksan9ra wrote:
It’s better to choose a spot where the snow cover lingers a long time… plant about three weeks before continuous freezing temperatures arrive.
Lyuda, I didn’t quite understand what kind of spot to choose.
gala7496 wrote:
More blooming phlox in October…
No way, the frosts killed all our flowers on September 16th. There wasn’t even anything left to take home.
gala7496 wrote:
Late fall garden blooms photo…
It’s so cold outside, yet your phloxes are blooming, such beauty! Is this a late variety, or did you cut them back earlier?
gala7496 wrote:
Lyuda, I still have nine window boxes with Geraniums hanging around the house…
Galya, how do you overwinter your geraniums?
YANGUN wrote:
Is this a late variety, or did you cut them back earlier?
Here in the Leningrad region, September and October have been warm. Other phloxes are still blooming too; half have finished, and the white ones that I cut back are just starting to bloom again. We haven’t had any frosts. I judge the weather by the flowers.
YANGUN wrote:
Galya, how do you overwinter your geraniums?
I store them in a bright, cool place. In the winter, they have a dormancy period, and ideally, the temperature should be between 7 to 10°C (45 to 50°F) during this time. This can be an enclosed, unheated balcony or a glassed-in porch attached to a heated house. Trailing (Ivy) Geraniums like the cold even more than regular ones; they overwinter beautifully on the porch where it stays around 5-10°C (40-50°F).
Horn1051 wrote:
By mid-April, the roots should grow out through the bottom holes… And I planted the Candy onions in clusters without separating them…
Katya, I read an interesting article about letting roots grow out of the bottom for tomatoes, I really want to try it. And I originally didn’t want to sow onion seeds in the spring at all. That’s why I bought a lot of onion sets. But when I was sorting through my seeds from last year, I found a lot of onion seeds. Looks like I’ll have to sow them, but I’ve decided not to do it indoors—I’ll sow them a bit later directly in the greenhouse and see what happens.
