Choosing Open-pollinated Bulbing Onions for Wet Tropics

6 years ago

I'm looking for advice on NON-HYBRID Onion Varieties that can successfully bulb in wetter climates nearer to the Equator than the typical Onion does.

Some important factors to consider:

-Less wild difference in day-length change over the seasons.

-Must be able to grow without cover (i.e. no greenhouse) despite regular rains.

-Heightened disease resistance would be a huge plus.

I'm willing (and, honestly, expecting) to take on a breeding program to create better suited cultivars for these types of environments, so even if you don't know of one that fits the "whole bill" I'd like to hear of any experiences you've had with, say, Onions that lasted through torrential downpour periods and came out unscathed, and that sort of thing.

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Comments (4)

steiconi
6 years ago
UH has a couple of varieties of onions; I don't know if they are hybrids. https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/seed/seeds.asp#onion

They may be willing to discuss other options.

You don't work for UH, do you? : )
spencerwillis90
6 years ago
as far as i know, the problem with growing onions here is the lack of cold. if you live up high in the mountains its another story and you should be able to get bulbs. the most success ive had here at 700' elevation (120+ inches of rain a year) is smaller than marble sized bulbs.( https://www.rareseeds.com/red-creole-onion/ ) i grew that variety - i may have planted them at the wrong time of year too.

and like you said you wanted to make sure you got short day varieties. you could look for southern US varieties.

the other factor to consider is during your seeding stage if heavy rains come they will wash away the small seeds. this has happened to me time and time again with any small sort of seed. ive created a 'screen structure' to prevent heavy rains from washing out my seeds, but im currently three days into the first experiment so im not sure if the screen will allow the soil to heat enough to germinate the seeds or if a roofed structure would work better.

check out baker creek - only heirloom seeds so they are all open pollinated

https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/onions/
seekingseeds thanked spencerwillis90
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I'm in central Alberta. I start mine from seed in late February/early March under lights, then plant them out around May 20. When most of the tops have fallen over and the remaining tops are close enough to falling that I can push them over without them snapping, that's when I pull the onions and lay them on their side in the garden to dry. This year that was August 31. End of August is pretty typical. The tops are still very green at this point so I leave the onions in the garden until the tops have completely dried and can be pulled off fairly easily. That takes 2 weeks, maybe 3, depending on weather. I bring them inside in stages, that is I don't wait for them all to completely dry, I bring in dry ones when they are ready. I don't think I've ever had them hit by frost while they lay out drying, but I don't think I'd be too concerned by a few degrees of frost. A hard frost would be another matter. It's night now so I can't take a photo of the onions, but they would look pretty similar to this photo from 2008, which was just after I pulled the onions to dry (August 30 that year).
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Ezzirah, Any onions sold as bundled plants in Oklahoma should be types that grow well here....I've only seen long daylength types sold here as bulb-like sets, not as bundled plants. The original Granex was released in Texas in the early 1950s, I think, and is still sold today. There now are many named granex types sold for the south and they all grow well and produce, but not all are equally productive and disease resistant. The Grano types (like Texas 1015Y) are improved granex types and the improvement is mainly improved disease resistance, which in the case of onions generally means improved resistance to pinkrot. When selecting onions to grow in Oklahoma, any granex, grano or bermuda type ought to grow just fine. It is the long daylength types that won't bulb up here. Another easy way to choose is to watch for the word 'sweet' or 'supersweet' in a variety name or in the variety description because those are the types that grow well in the south. (We can't grown the hotter or more pungent/more spicy onions here because they don't bulb up.) The only downside to growing sweet or supersweet tyes is that they generally don't store for as long as they hotter and more pungent onion types. With proper curing, though, I've had them last easily 6 months in storage which is longer than average for sweet onions. For longer-term storage, I chop them or slice them and freeze them. Onions are one of the easiest veggies to grow here. As long as you don't plant them in soil that stays too wet and as long as late, severe cold doesn't hit them they're a cinch to grow. Dawn
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Caroline, You're welcome. Eating produce from the garden is so fun. I'm never happier than when the harvest is on-going and we're feasting on delicious, home-grown, organically-grown veggies with real flavor. We've been eating broccoli and a few tomatoes, but other crops are coming along fine and we'll be getting other stuff soon. Shekannah, To learn more about growing onions, go to the website I linked below and read their FAQs, Onion Growing Guide and past newsletters. I don't know how any onion will do as a fall crop. Most onions are daylength-senstive and need a specific number of hours of daily sunlight in order to bulb-up. They will grow whether they get the right daylength, but they won't form bulbs or they'll form bulbs that are not as large as they ought to be. Usually, when you plant onions in the fall, you're planning to overwinter them and harvest them the following year. Red of Florence is a long day-length onion and we only get good results from short-day or intermediate-day types here, which you can read about at the Dixondale website. You can grow onions in the fall for "green onions" but don't expect bulbing. Dixondale, by the way, is my provider of choice because we have a very, very, very limited selection of onions here locally in the spring. They are more expensive than buying whatever the stores have locally, but they are worth every penny. Plus, if you leave the shipping date to them, they'll choose the best date for you....and they are the experts so your onions will arive at exactly the right time for planting. This is one of my favorite plant sources. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Dixondale Onion Farms
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seekingseeds
Original Author
6 years ago
To Steiconi - No, I don't work for UH. I just want everything I use in cooking on a regular basis to be getting produced from my own garden. Dependency for such things is not something I want in life.

To Spencerwillis90 - Thank you for sharing the specific info of your own experience. I'm at just over 1000' mark in a high rainfall area as well. Southern varieties have definitely crossed my mind. At this point I'm thinking to just get a number of such varieties, plant them all and only save the one that does the best, and continue working with it if I feel improvements are needed to suit my location more. When (time of year) did you plant those Red Creoles, if you can recall?
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spencerwillis90
6 years ago
yes, get some plant breeding on! pretty sure i planted them in the fall? trying to use our cooler months for growing them. but you can always look into shallots (ive got my first crop i sowed a few days ago, hoping for the best) leeks, green onions, and chives all grow well here as a semi replacements for onions
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Choosing Open-pollinated Bulbing Onions for Wet Tropics

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Choosing Open-pollinated Bulbing Onions for Wet Tropics

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