dixondale long-day onion recommendation

10 years ago

I placed this in the vegetable gardening forum, and someone suggested I post it here...

This will be my first year ordering onions from dixondale. We live 60 miles south of the Canadian border, so definitely a long day onion area.

We enjoy our onions cooked, sliced for hamburgers/salad, rings, and as greens.

Any experience/recommendations on variety is appreciated.

TIA

Tom

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Comments (3)

wcthomas
10 years ago
I have been ordering from Dixondale for years and love their onion plants and service. Of their long day varieties, the most successful in my New Jersey garden was always Walla Walla, which is also very popular in the pacific northwest, followed by Candy and Big Daddy.

This year I moved my garden to my summer home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia and tried seven varieties from Dixondale. This garden has the same climate as my NJ garden due to the elevation (2,600 ft), but the days are about 20 minutes shorter at latitude 37 (versus 40 in NJ). The winner in the VA garden was Copra, followed closely by Candy - both consistently large & beautiful globe shaped onions! Ailsa Craig also did very well, yielding the largest onions, but they only store for about a month. Next came Red Zeppelin, but they were late and inconsistent in size - ranging from small to huge.

The worst performers were Walla Walla, Yellow Spanish, and Big Daddy. The poor performance of the usually great Walla Wallas may have been due to the plants I received being rather leggy and limpy, giving them a poor start. Usually the plants from Dixondale are really healthy, but this year the Walls Wallas were sub par. I may give them another chance next year.

I suggest you try a sampling of Walla Walla, Candy, and Copra and see what works best in your garden. Be sure to give them plenty of nitrogen and water starting a couple of weeks after planting. I also mulch my onions with a few inches of hay to hold the moisture and suppress weeds (onions hate weeds), but this is not necessary if you keep up on the watering and weeding. Dixondale has excellent growing instructions on their web site.

My wife thinks I over did the onions and garlic this year, planting 400 of each for just the two of us. I agree, so I cut the plantings down to only 360 of each for next year! :-) She doesn't understand the addiction.

TomNJ/VA
nugrdnnut
Original Author
10 years ago
WCThomas,
Thanks for sharing your experience!

Do you eat any as green onions and if so do you prefer one variety over the others for green onions?

Thanks,
Tom
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I always plant between 1/2 and 1" deep and have no problem getting big bulbs. If they are only 2" down, I might not be as worried about bulbing (well, maybe a little worried but not a lot) but at 3", I would think you might not get big bulbs. The reason they recommend 1" deep planting is because it works. I think you can get away with slightly deeper planting in sandy soil but there's no guarantee. If you recently had rototilled the soil and it still is all fluffed up, then when it is watered heavily, the soil will pack back down quite a bit and the onions likely won't be planted as deeply as they are right now. However, if they were mine and I wanted to be sure I'd get big bulbs, I'd replant them at a 1" depth, and I'd do it as quickly as possible. Other than planting at the proper depth, to get large bulbs, keep the beds well-weeded because onions are shallow-rooted and don't compete well with weeds, keep them well-watered but not in perpetually soggy soil, and keep them well fed. The ultimate size of your onion bulbs is dependent on the number/size of the leaves you have on each plant when the onions begin to bulb up. For each leaf that a plant has, one "ring" of onion tissue will form, and the bigger the leaves the bigger the onions. Dawn
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wcthomas
10 years ago
No I let them all mature into full sized onions. I hold the Copras in my cellar because they have a long storage life, and most of the rest get chopped or sliced for freezing. And of course some get canned in tomato sauces and salsa.

TomNJ/VA

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dixondale long-day onion recommendation

Comments (3)

wcthomas

nugrdnnut
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dixondale long-day onion recommendation

Comments (3)

wcthomas

nugrdnnutOriginal Author

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nugrdnnut
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