You didn't say whether you'd actually grown onions from seed? yes, i grow 3 varieties each year from seeds. i used to buy plants and forget sets all together. i've grown onions from seeds for several seasons under shop lights so i do know what i am talking about. you are wise to question my experience as i'm telling you flat out that advice is pure bs. a lot of people on the net like to give advice. i doubt they mean to be misleading but sometimes they are just that. I do believe bulbing can be triggered in onion seedlings, I'm just not sure of whether fluorescents will do it at 14-16 hrs. So I wonder when I read stuff like this: "If you start onion seeds under lights, remember to turn the grow lights off to give the plants a suitable night. Onion seedlings will bulb too early if exposed to long days at any time during their development. You will not get anything bigger than sets." - Jarvis, B., Yard & Garden Line News, University of Minnesota Cooperative Extension, Volume 3 Number 2, February 1, 2001/ i agree that all plants need that dark time to rest. it occurs in nature. but plants under shop lights require 16 hours of light followed by 8 hours of dark. now i'm going to make a swag, remember i told you that the longest days or shortest nights trigger bulb formation. so perhaps, just a swag now, if you vary the length of the light the plants are exposed to, increasing it from say 8 to 16 hours over a few weeks time THEN possibly you fooled the plants into thinking they went from april to mid june and that is exactly the scenerio that causes bulbing IN NATURE. i know of no one that does this with shop lights. no one. start with 16 on, 8 off, until you've hardened them off and plant them outside. going from 16 hours of shop light to say 14 hours of natural sun light DOES NOT effect the plants and cause them to start bulbing. believe me all i have written is true! oh, btw, where i live the longest day is 15 hours and my giving the plants 16 hours of shop light light does not effect the plants when they go out in late april with a 14.5 hour day. if you gave the plants 24 hours of light that would harm them as they need a dark period to rest. i grow about 33 to 40 pounds of each variety each year, my methods work just fine. good luck. tom

hi ms nature, I picked Copra because it keeps extremely well; so it will still be solid to plant early next spring. I do not expect that either Copra or Ailsa Craig would be hardy this far north; so I don't intend to plant my sets this fall. I would have some doubts that Ailsa Craig would keep long enough to get to next spring, but I know that Copra will, since I have done this before - replanting small Copra bulbs to grow on another year; I have not had a bolting problem from them yet either. You might have to plant the Ailsa Craig sets under lights, if they sprout too early which is actually quite likely. I would not expect them to winter over from a fall planting as far north as your and my gardens are, unless we have an exceptionally mild, snowy, and short winter. The key is as early as you can work your garden and plant as shallow as possible. Here in Minneapolis, I have squirrels that bury peanuts and walnuts in newly dug earth; so I cover newly planted beds with chicken wire, until there is a good sprout, and the bed has settled. I intend to also plant my multipliers next spring too. I know that works because that was done in my mother's garden, too, for decades.

That treatment (Sevin) is worse than the disease. That would imply that sevin harms the plant you spray it on. It does not. While it is indiscriminate in the insects it kills, and will take out pollinator and pest alike, that comes down more to being careful when you use it. A plant that is not producing flowers or has already gone into making fruit with no more flowers for the year isn't going to attract pollinators, so I see no problem with some chemical protection. No, I'm not an organic farmer, and I'm quite okay with that. =)

I was just curious to see how my onions were doing today and I transplanted some of the cells where I am growing into a 4x4 plastic pot. What I was looking at were the roots. They were not that big. Some were about the size of the top shoot but others were only half or less. Is this a lack of nutrients? Also how many shoots should each plant have? I've looked at pictures online and they all seemed to have multiple roots and shoot per plant. I planted them on March 1st. Do they just need more time? I'm just really anxious to get this right lol. Thank you