2023 Onions at GFF

The 2023 onions were planted weeks ago into trays and they got moved out to Valhalla (one of our high tunnels) this past weekend.  The target field planting time is the first week of May this year (depending on field conditions).  When everything goes according to plan, we seed the onions in the 3rd week of February and then plant between April 28 and May 15.

This year we are growing a fairly modest number of onions.  I estimate we might have around 700 plants to put in to the ground.  For comparison, from 2015 to 2018 a typical harvest was well "north of" 3000 onions sized from 1/3 to 1/2 pound.  There were usually smaller onions as well that we accounted for by weight and not count.  

I thought people might enjoy hearing our selections for our 2023 growing plan.

Gladstone

Because we don't have to have quite as many onions with no CSA, we can actually continue our quest to find some open pollinated varieties and see if we can figure them out for good production levels.  Our selection for a white onion is Gladstone, a variety we have dabbled with in the past.  You can see a picture of what they look like at the top of this post.  Unfortunately, after some searching, I can't verify that these are open pollinated, with Harris seed listing it as an F1 hybrid and others not giving it that designation.  I guess I'll have to do some digging on that!

Sadly, there was an issue with watering the seedlings during our trip to Alabama and the Gladstone and Redwing trays took a fair amount of damage.  So, I'm not sure if we'll get a fair trial out of this.

Gladstone tends to be a bit longer season than White Wing (our favorite in the past) and Sierra Blanca (the back up when we couldn't get White Wing).  They are also a bit more elongated in shape and run a wider range of sizes when they mature.  All things you might expect from open pollinated varieties.

Still, we liked the taste and felt the performance in earlier trials was good enough to see if we could unlock the secret to success with them.  That secret may remain hidden for one more year.

Redwing

This has been our favored red onion for years, though we have tried a few others.  We've found Redwings to be consistent and be decent for storage.  We've tried several other reds in the past (in addition to Redwing) because we're always curious about our options.  That, and one never knows if a variety is going to be taken away as an option.

This year, we were able to get Redwing and decided we didn't want to be experimenting with every type of onion.

New York Early

Our yellow onion is another open pollinated variety that we have grown in the past.  This will be the first year that New York Early will carry the load for our yellow storage onion.  

We've found that they store nearly as well as some of the popular hybrids and they have a milder taste.  That milder taste actually translates well for me since the stronger onions often disagree with me.  The issue in the past is that a smaller percentage of the plants reach maturity than other yellow storage onions we have grown.  On the other hand, all of the New York Early plants that do reach maturity produce a nice, large onion.  

You either get a nice big onion or you get no onion.  At least that's been our experience.  

I have a suspicion that if we pay some attention to them this year, we might unlock some tricks to be more successful with this variety.

Believe it or not, that's it.  Unless you count the dozen Ailsa Craig plants we'll stick somewhere this year.  We'll do our best to report back in the fall.

Have a great weekend everyone!