Hey folks,

I thought I'd share a success! Actually, Jerreth and I have grown potato onions, practically since we were first married. Her grandparents grew them and passed some on to us. But when we went to live in Mexico for some years, we lost them. They wouldn't bulb up at that latitude. In 2002 or 2003, now living in NJ, I managed to get a new start from a GW member who lived in PA. But, when we moved to Oklahoma in 2005, I lost them again! There was just too much to do and keep track of, in that move.

Last fall I found this website which was promoting potato onions. I purchased $15 of starts, which were mainly small onions. I planted them in the garden on November 11 and they started to grow a little whenever the weather was mild. Cold snaps caused them no harm. In fact, when we lived in Indiana, we had potato onions, and they managed REALLY cold weather.

I like the fact that I can plant these onion any time from about October to March. Regular onions give me problems, since I struggle to hit deadlines, and here in Oklahoma, it's not just a dead line, it's more of a narrow slot!

For the past month or so, I've been impressed with the size of these potato onions. The ones we've had before never sized up like these. I pulled these this week. Take a look at the picture. From that one order (12 oz.), which basically planted two 15' rows, we harvested, 13 pounds of onions! A good number of them rival a Spanish onion in size, which is something I had never before seen.

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The potato onions we've grown before keep extremely well, just like shallots. We'll see with these. I sure hope they keep well. About 8 of them had rotten spots in them when we harvested.

For years I've been planting my onions in blocks in order to conserve space. We'll I think I'm through with that. Every year my blocks turn into weed patches and my onions do poorly. This year I planted my potato onions in rows. I hoed them a number of times. Also, in order to make better use of the space I planted red peanut beans alongside my potato onions and garlic (also in a row). The alliums (onions & garlic) had a big head start on the beans, since they grow in cool weather. But then the beans caught up and afforded some shade for my alliums when the days got hot. Both did well. Plus, whenever I picked beans, I also weeded, which benefited my alliums. So that's the way I'm going to do onions and garlic from now on.

So take a gander at this website. My hat's off to this lady: talk about a great home (cottage) industry! For me $15 for 20 oz of small potato onions is a great deal. Now that I have this bunch of large potato onions I expect next year we'll get oodles of little onions, which will then serve for a really large and productive planting in 2011. And, yes, we did get some small onions this year, so we will harvest some large ones in 2010.

George

Tahlequah, OK

Here is a link that might be useful: Tater Onions