My Dixondale Onions Arrive Today

10 years ago

Today the USPS delivered a lovely box filled with bunches of onion plants. It has that yummy fresh onion smell.

Of course, I won't be planting them immediately since we have that whole freezing drizzle thing going on today with a wintery mix of freezing rain, sleet and snow in our forecast for tonight and tomorrow. I guess I won't be planting them tomorrow either.

However, if the forecasters are correct and a warming trend really does follow today's and tomorrow's yucky weather, I'll be out planting onions soon---maybe on Saturday.

It is starting to feel a tiny bit more like spring is just around the corner. Once the box from Dixondale arrives, Spring is only about 6 weeks away....at least at my house down here in southern OK.

Dawn

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Comments (11)

MiaOKC
10 years ago
Wheee! I was just checking the calendar because I believe the group order is supposed to arrive this week for pick-up on Thursday. I was wondering if there was any way in heck I could get my garden ready (haven't done a thing with it since last year) and now am looking at the forecast (high 60s this weekend!) and thinking there is a glimmer of hope!
mksmth zone 7a Tulsa Oklahoma
10 years ago
I just mentioned planting onions this weekend in my tree thread. lol

For anyone who is in Tulsa or nearby. I called Southwood Nursery and they should be getting their dixondale order this week also. They typically have about 5-6 different types. I think about $3-4 a bunch. Also will have their other root crop stuff.
I havent found anyone else around here that gets Dixondale.

mike
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Lynn, I am SO ready for the planting games to begin, despite the cold temps and wet ground. Quailhunter, I have a raised bed at the western end of my garden where the soil is naturally a little bit sandier than the clay in the rest of the garden. I've amended that bed a lot with organic matter over the years and it probably has the best drainage of any of my raised beds. It is still muddy, but not as muddy as the rest of the garden and property, so I think it will be OK to plant them there. If I didn't have that well-draining bed, I'd likely put the plants in the tornado shelter and hold them there until March. I have absolutely no idea when I'll be able to plant potatoes, though, because they're going into a new garden area that has had little amending and which has no raised beds, so it is still extremely wet. I have high hopes that the sunshine and warmer temps we're having this week will help dry out the soil some. I suspect the mud will continue to plague us and we'll just have to deal with it. It is almost (but not quite) enough to make a person wish for a drought. Glenda, I always have them ship at their recommended date for my zip code too because some years I can plant them at that time, but other times I have to hold them a couple of weeks. Since you can easily hold them for 3 weeks, I never have a problem getting them into the ground within 3 weeks of receiving them. How much cold onions can take seems highly variable. They are hardy so they can withstand a lot of cold, and I've never seen a 'drop dead' temperature below which they will not survive (although I'm sure there is one), but it seems to me that once the temperates drop much below 23 or 24 or 25 degrees that I start seeing signs of freeze damage on some onions. In terms of bolting, it is a combination of the plant size and the temperature. So, smaller onions can take more below-45 temps than larger ones can. I've never seen anything like a specific number of hours that onions can tolerate below 45 degrees before they'll bolt...just general comments that 'prolonged' exposure to cold temps can cause bolting in onions that are larger than 1/4" in diameter when those temps occur. In most of Oklahoma, onions are pretty safe from harm if they're planted anytime in March provided you cover them up if the traditional Easter cold spell is especially cold. I know that some people here in Love County plant them in January or February but onions put in the ground in January run a big risk of bolting, and if planted in Feb., the earlier in the month, the riskier. The worst possible scenario is to plant the onions at the appropriate time, from mid-Feb. to mid-Mar. and have them growing very well in prolonged mild weather and then have a very cold, very late spell of prolonged cold weather in--let's say--April. If the weather is mild and they're growing well and have gotten larger than 1/4" in diameter, that late prolonged cold spell can cause them to bolt. When that happens, it seems like some bolt and some don't. So, cold weather early while they're smaller is not so bad as long as it stays above the low 20s, but the later in the spring that a prolonged cold spell hits, the worse its effect on them. Highly variable temperatures is one issue that causes onion planting to get tricky here. Short daylength onions need to go into the ground as early as possible in winter so they can get their maximum green leaf growth before the appropriate daylength triggers bulbing. (Because each green leaf represents one layer of the onion.) If you hold short-day types too long because of cold weather fears, their days to grow are limited and you get fewer leaves which results in smaller onions. Intermediate daylength types can be held a little longer in spring before being planted because they'll have longer to grow leaves before the right daylength triggers bulbing. The difference is the reason my 3 individual bundles are intermediate types and my sampler is of shortday types...because intermediate types give me larger bulbs more consistently, all other things being considered. Dawn
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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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Roger, Most sources say that dormant onion plants can survive for at least 3 weeks because there is enough stored energy in the bulb to sustain them for that long. With onions that are pulled and then shipped quickly like Dixondale's I'm willing to bet they could go 5 or 6 weeks. The most important thing is to promptly remove them from the box as soon as you receive them. If you leave them in the box, there's a greater chance they'll rot or develop a fungal disease due to poor air flow. Keep them in a cool, dry location. Don't keep them in an unheated building like a shed, barn or garage if that building will go below 45 degrees. Don't keep them in a location where they'll be exposed to great fluctuations in humidity. I usually keep mine in the tornado shelter, but if you don't have a tornado or a dry cellar/basement, you can keep them in an unheated closet or pantry. Onions should be planted 4-6 weeks before your last frost date. Planting them significantly earlier than that increases the chance that they will reach a large enough size (1/4" in diameter) that repeated exposure to temperatures between 40 and 45 degrees will cause them to bolt (flower and set seed). If your onions arrive much too early, hold them as long as you reasonably can and then plant them following the directions in Dixondale's Onion Planting Guide, which is included in each order or can be found on their website. If your ground is still pretty cold and you're also still having nights consistently below 40 or 45 degrees, you can mulch them to keep them warm or you can put a low tunnel over them using either coathanger wire or PVC pipe to form curved supports over your row/rows of onions and putting 4 to 6 mm plastic over those hoops. Glenda, I've never had a bad crop from Dixondale onions even in some very difficult weather years. I hope they grow as well for you as they have for me. Dawn
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Paula, I noticed on the evening news that her risk is higher than ours. Poor Owie! Getting the storms worse up there than down here. Just a reminder, y'all, we had a pretty severe tornado hit Lone Grove in Carter County in February 2009, so unexpectedly severe weather can find us even in the so-called "cold" months. I've been watching the warming of the soil temps with great interest too, but sure wish we could know "for sure" that they will stay. With the warm soil temps, the winter weeds and grasses have gone crazy, and I'm going to have to mow in another few days. I had a little chat with the fruit trees today, and they promised me they won't bloom until Friday, but I'm not sure they'll make it that far. It does feel like an early spring. Jay and I have been discussing having a feeling it would be an early spring for a month or two now, but it still is weird to think we might be right. I think the last early spring we had where I actually planted warm-season crops exactly on time (without them freezing later) beginning in late March was in 2006 or 2007. Dawn
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
10 years ago
I suppose we're all lucky that the winter precipitation that has fallen lately hasn't fallen in large amounts. If it had, all of us would have soil that's too muddy for soil prep or planting.

Mia, A glimmer of hope is good. My family kept looking at me like I was crazy when I used our last three good sunny days to do a lot of cleanup, but I was just trying to beat the rain. No problem, here, apparently, because not enough moisture has fallen to give us much of a mud problem. About 2 days of windy weather will dry out what little moisture currently resides in the soil. I was worrying we'd get more rain before onion-planting time and that I'd have to mud in my onions like Larry has had to do a couple of times lately, but the sleet or snow that fell melted down to practically nothing. We aren't supposed to get enough tonight or tomorrow that it will threaten my plans to spend the weekend playing in the dirt.

Mike, We always get in a sort of Catch-22 with onions. We have to get them in as early as we reasonably can so the plants have time to get nice and big before the daylength induces bulbing and, yet, we don't want to plant them so early that they freeze and die. Some years you can plant them at exactly the recommended time and still have them freeze repeatedly and bolt and/or die or rot because it rains a lot at the same time it is very cold. It kinda makes you appreciate the fact that we get onions to produce a crop most years despite the weather.

I'm always hoping for rain in January because so little tends to fall here, but then in February I have to abruptly reverse course and start hoping it won't rain until after I get the onions in the ground. Then, I find myself hoping for enough rainfall to keep them happy, but not for so much to fall that they get waterlogged and cannot grow.

You know, if I wasn't a gardener, I could pretty much ignore the weather. Instead I feel obsessed by it...what it is doing, how, why, when, where, etc.

Dawn
p_mac
10 years ago
Mia - I KNOW!!!! I'm waiting for the e-mail to pick up too!!!!

Dawn - thanks for the heads up!!!

and Neeny Neeny Boo Boo.... I've already got my onion bed ready as soon as I get a good day...AND I have a really large frost cover!

Don't be hatin'.....ha!

Paula
Cynthiann
10 years ago
I got my onions in mail today, too. Looks like this weekend will be perfect weather for planting... to bad I have to work all weekend. I'm off now until Thursday, so I'm wondering it will be warm enough on Thursday. Either that or I just have to hope for good weather next Monday.

Dawn, I know what you mean about obsessing about the weather, lol. Between my gardening and my running I constantly have to check the weather just so I know how to schedule my day or week.
BixbyM
10 years ago
mksmith- I have found Dixondale onions the last 2 years at Carmichael's on Memorial in Bixby. Usually 6 to 8 varieties. Last year less than $2 a bunch. These are full bunches. The ones I saw at Southwood last year seemed to be partial smaller quantity per bunch. Carmichael's usually gets them in around this time but I have not checked yet.
mksmth zone 7a Tulsa Oklahoma
10 years ago
Thanks BixbyM. Carmichael's is right down the road. Not sure why I never thought to check there.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
10 years ago
Cynthiann, Go ahead and plant on Thursday if you can. It is perfect onion-planting weather. My definition of perfect onion-planting weather is this: sunny, soil that is not obnoxiously wet, wind that is not strong enough to freeze your fingers off, and no severe weather in the forecast for the next 5 days. We cannot put off planting our onions too much because they need to settle in and have enough days to grow before our daylength reaches the number of hours per day that causes them to start bulbing up.

Y'all, I haven't counted the number of onions per bundle, but I will say that the bundles I received look overpacked. One variety in particular has too many that are too big and those are likely to bolt this spring, but I'll just plant them in a separate area by themselves and use them as scallions if they start bolting.

I left my box of onions in the mudroom the first day they arrived because it always stays cooler there than in the rest of the house since it isn't heated, but never drops below the lower 50s or maybe the upper 40s since it is well-insulated. Therefore, the mud room was stinky....in a delicious onion-y sort of way. It kinda smelled like spring in there.

I probably won't plant them today. I'd like for the soil to warm up a little bit before I stick my fingers in it, but I might start planting them tomorrow.

Dawn
chickencoupe
10 years ago
Atwoods had Dixondale onions. They also had seed potatoes. Yay.

I'm so excited.
slowpoke_gardener
10 years ago
I bough Dixondale 1015Y today $1.79 per bundle at a small grocery store southeast of Ft. Smith. I only bought 2 bundles but I plan on buying more .
oldfishinglure
10 years ago
Just got mine in the ground down in Ardmore. Did 2 of the Mixed Sets. Planted on the edges of a few beds and in between on some. I may have planted a bit too early but its a knee jerk reaction from planting too late last year. Matt

This post was edited by oldfishinglure on Thu, Feb 13, 14 at 14:17

My Dixondale Onions Arrive Today

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MiaOKC

mksmth zone 7a Tulsa Oklahoma

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