Hi all - I am presuming, from reading above, that Catawissa and the green "walking" onion are the same thing. Are they also the small pickling onions, or am I getting things mixed up? If anybody's got some that they don't mind sending my way, I live on the Sunshine Coast of BC, Canada. I have had some live plants sent to me just loose in a box from a friend in the U.S. who apparently didn't understand the restrictions on mailing living organisms, and apparently the customs people don't check everything they come across. Even though the box was damaged (severely), the little iris bulbs and two varieties of a suculant (very common - I just can't recall the name right now - mine are purple and white) all survived the trip and the dark! Anyway, if you're in Canada yourself it would probabaly make things easier, but if you're an American who is up for an experiment with the postal system and some onion bulbs, then please contact me and I'll send along my address. Thanks, - Kenn / faerie

Yellow multipliers will do well enough spring planted. Plant shallow; so that the noses definitely stick out. Kelly's Green Mountain whites do very well spring planted. IIRC that is how he does it himself, and last summer that worked very well for me, too. The nests were small but the individual bulbs were larger in general for the green mountain than for the yellow multipliers. To the best of my knowledge relatives, for whom a strain of yellow multpliers was a family heirloom, always spring planted with never a bolt. Those I fall planted last year had a single half hearted bolt, which I pinched out. I have not had to take any special care of stored bulbs yet, beyond making sure to get a good cure, right after digging them and then stay dry. I find they can be stored at very close to room temperature in fact, for both the yellows and the Green Mountains. That would be mid to low 60s at that end of my kitchen- I don't keep it very warm over there toward the back door. BUT I don't do anything special beyond braiding them, and I think those braids would hold very nearly as well just hanging in the kitchen where one could reach from the counter to pick whatever was needed. In fact I have seen that done in kitchens somewhat warmer than mine with no sprouting. That would be the yellows, but this is the second winter that I have been treating my Green Mountains exactly like the yellows and I do not see any difference this year either. Mid summer planting for the following year's harvest is intriguing. You get the nest divisions this fall and next spring they hopefully will size up, or maybe you can dig them very early next spring and split them out to individual plants with more room to size up... Anybody else ever tried that. The one time I tried spring divisions, I lost a goodly portion of the resulting divisions, though not all of them. When I tried that under lights with garlic and multipliers, the garlics split out well enough but the multipliers didn't split up nearly as well and were difficult to separate. The resulting divsions did not do so good however, which I suspect had more to do with failure to control the lights properly as anything, daylength probably was more critical than I allowed for.

It sounds like you my have potato onions. I tried them, and did not have good luck, but I think I put them in super rich soil and a raised bed. I've found multiplying onions seem to like our own soil here: clay mixed with compost. Adding sand to the clay - it really depends on the type of sand. Play sand, or fine sand and clay makes cement. Course sand works quite well but I'd add more clay. The generally "accepted" (meaning, it seems to work and is popular right now) is 1/3 amendment to 2/3 clay. Both your shallot and multiplying onions are considered perennial. Although they get divided, I've found you don't need to rotate them. You can keep them in the same bed but every few years you can lift, divide and add lots of yummy home compost. This is working for me well for a different kind of multiplying onion (topsets) and leeks.

Bon, They might be fine. With onions you just never know. My onions have no mulch on them this year and I don't intend to mulch until and if this infernal rain stops falling. I need for the soil to be able to dry up as much as possible in between rainstorms or in between rainy days. My usual heavy mulch strategy is on hold for some areas of the garden because the soil is far too wet as it is and I don't want for mulch to prevent it from achieving whatever little bit of drying out it can get between storms. I think one reason I have so many lovely volunteer plants this year is because the onion bed is not mulched. From that bed, I have dug up and moved hundreds of Laura Bush petunia seedlings, hundreds of moss rose seedlings, and dozens of catnip, basil, lemon basil, and chamomile seedlings. That onion bed is the gift that just keeps giving, and I didn't even use all the seedlings I dug up. A lot of them got pulled up and composted. It is relatively weed free and volunteer free now, but I weed it every single day that rain doesn't keep me out of the garden like it is doing today. I see good onion plant great, nice leaf development and happy plants, but even well-amended clay in raised beds can stay too wet if the rain falls several days a week like it has been falling lately. I'd have it mulched if I could, but that would almost guarantee the onions will rot. So, you know, even though you're drier than we are, the lack of mulch might not be hurting the onions as long as you keep them well-weeded. More so than most plants, onions cannot abide competition, so keeping them weed-free helps produce bigger, healthier onions. I have the pathways mulched to prevent soil splash and its related diseases. I have the tomato beds, the rows of sweet corn and the bean beds mulched to prevent soil splash and related diseases. I have the flowers mulched. The onions, though? If they are to survive, they must remain unmulched. Including the rain that has fallen on my garden today, we're approaching year-to-date rainfall of 14". It sounds good, no? Well, actually, no. That much rainfall this early hurts as much as or more than it helps. I'm not panicking yet, but after looking at my forecast for the next week, I am starting to think the back garden will not get planted because it is going to stay too muddy too late in the season. More and more this year's rainfall reminds me of 2007---when I still had tomato and pepper plants in containers in May and June because I couldn't put them in the ground.....and the plants in the ground were waterlogged and growth was stalled and some were dying. I ended up planting a lot in cat litter buckets and 5 gallon buckets that year because there was no other way to do it. Peppers are perfectly happy in cat litter buckets, but indeterminate tomato plants in 5 to 7 gallon pots require an incredible amount of water and fertilizer to stay happy even when the ground is too wet for them. 2007 was a horrible weather year. While 2014 started out kind of wonderful, the longer the rain falls, the more likely we see a repeat of 2007, or even 2004. While 2004 was great overall, the spring was far too wet with over a foot of rain in one month. I want rain and I appreciate getting it, but we're at the point that it is too much at once. I don't even remember what my onions did in 2004 or 2007 but I think they struggled and some bolted and some died. I always plant tons of them to allow for some to drown, burn up in drought, or be pounded into oblivion and our crazy weather is why I do that. I wish we could send all this excess moisture over to SW OK, particularly to the Altus and Duncan areas. Their lakes would love all the water runoff we are having here.