This was our best year, since coming to OK, for onions; and I know we could do better. When we left NJ we had to leave our potato onions. I found a place to order them from, and they are hard to find. I'll include the link.

Potato onions don't get as large as those sown by seed. But anywhere I've grown them (except Mexico, where they wouldn't bulb) they have been easier to produce. One plants them about now and harvests in July.

I was exceedingly pleased with the amount of onion sets $15 got me from Tater Onions.

George

Here is a link that might be useful: Tater Onions

I may never have this much success again. But, for what it's worth, here's my Candy Onions. Many of them were as big as a softball.

I bought sets/starts -- whatever they're called -- they looked like short green onions, 50 or 60 of them banded together with a rubber band -- at Atwood's. The whole clump was only a dollar or so. Instead of planting as early as possible, I waited till after the last frost date to plant them. We had a couple of possible frosts after that date, and I went out and covered them on those nights. They got plenty of water as we had torrential rains most of the spring, but that was a good thing as they were planted along the inside edges of one of the raised beds, where it actually drains too well for onions most of the time.

I was pleased to see this onion enthusiasm in Oklahoma. I think there is good potential for onions as a niche specialty crop here. They can be used by the grower and marketed if you want to earn money. I am with the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service and work at the Agriculture Center at Lane in Atoka County. We have been doing work on onion variety evaluation and transplant production. I am curious about this new variety "Red Candy Apple" I would be pleased to hear about how it does for any of you who try it. Regarding the onion images from "ilene in neok", those bulbs appeared to have been harvested early and probably would have increased in size if left in the field longer. You can wait until the neck weakens and begin to break over before you harvest. They do look like healthy onions! If you are interested in receiving a report of our field trials, let me know by email jim.shrefler@okstate.edu or call 580-889-7343.

What I'm looking for this year is a good "spicy" onion that will grow well in Oklahoma. It's becoming a pain in my wallet to buy the spicier ones from the grocery. Any suggestions?

Kathy

Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog includes latitude recommendations for the seed they sell. Here's a link to latitude in Oklahoma.

Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma latitude map

Kathy,

These are the onion varieties recommended for Oklahoma in the OSU Vegetable Variety Guide for Home Gardeners:

YELLOW: Granex, Grano 1015Y (Texas Supersweet), Yellow Sweet Spanish, Walla Walla Sweet

RED: Granex

WHITE: Crystal White, Granex, White Sweet Spanish

BUNCHING: Evergreen White

I'm not at all an onion expert, but I think all the above varieties are fairly sweet, or at least more sweet than pungent. Of the OSU-recommended varieties, I think the Yellow Sweet Spanish and the White Sweet Spanish would be the least sweet and most pungent.

The problem with wanting to grow onions considered hotter, more pungent or more spicey is that the onions that grow best in the southern US are the sweet ones. The onions that grow best in the north are the more pungent ones. And, the types of onions that grow well in each area is determined by day-length.

SHORT DAY ONIONS: These start the bulbing process when daylength reaches only 10-12 hours. Here in Oklahoma, short-day onions grow best. Short day onions grow well only in southern states, which would be everything from Oklahoma, Arkansas, etc. southward. You can grow them in the northern states, but they remain small.

INTERMEDIATE DAY ONIONS: Require 12-14 hours of daily sunlight to begin bulbing, so they will grown best in most of the south, except the southernmost parts of the southern states, but they also grow well through the states that sit one state or two above the southern tier of states. Here in the middle of the USA, for example, they can be grown in the northern half of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Above all but northernmost Kansas, you have to grow the next category....

LONG DAY ONIONS: These do best in northern states that have 14-16 hours of sunlight daily, and there are both sweet and storage (pungent) types that do well in the northern states. Here in the middle of the country, you can grow long day onions in the northernmost half, or maybe third, of Kansas (if planted very early) and then all the way north to Canada. Most of the more pungent or spicier or hotter onions (however you prefer to describe them) that I am familiar with are the long-day types.

Can you grow long-day types in Oklahoma? Perhaps and, the farther north you are, the more likely they'd bulb up a little but they most likely wouldn't get as big as they do when grown in the more northern states. Since you are pretty far north in Oklahoma, I think you might have success with a Long Daylength type like Big Daddy (100days)(available from Dixondale online and probably other onion suppliers as well). A new long daylength onion at Dixondale that is supposed to be a bit more pungent is Sterling (95 days). I have grown one of Dixondale's long daylength specialty onions--Red Torpedo--and it did OK. It is, as the name implies, a long torpedo-shaped onion and not a round one. It is a sweet onion, so I just mentioned it because it was a long daylength type that did form a bulb here (somewhat).

If you buy your onion plants locally (cause Dixondale's are very expensive), check the side of the wooden crate they're shipped in. Sometimes on the side, the word "storage" or "sweet" is printed either on the box or the label. Anything labeled "storage" would be more pungent than those labeled "sweet".

I usually buy from Dixondale so I can get exactly the variety I want at exactly the time I want to plant it, so the extra expense is worth it to me. Sometimes my local feed/seed stores sell onions from Dixondale and sometimes they sell seeds from Bonnie Plant Farms. They all have about the same onions every year though, and they are almost always the sweet types, although at least the sweet spanish types are not quite as sweet as the supersweet types.

You could try asking your local ag extension agent if any pungent type onions grow in your part of the state.

And, if you decide to try growing a long daylength type, the earlier you can get them into the ground the better. Then, keep them well-fed and well-watered so you'll have the biggest, healthiest green tops possible at the time that bulbing initiates and that will give you a good chance of having some size to the bulbs.

Dawn