Homegrown Onions

Onions are fairly easy to grow at home. You need a full day of sun, lots of water, and well draining soil (the sandier, the better). I do not have the right soil conditions for onions but I keep growing them anyway. Insanity gardening happens here because there's some years that I just forget what I've done the few years before. Because I don't have the right sandy soil - my soil is really organic and a lot more compost-y - my onions tend to stay on the smaller side. These yellow onions are from starts from Menards. I bought them last minute after being unable to decide if I should grow them again.

There's a bunch of tips and tricks for onion growing out there. I have seen people say that trimming the small starts a few times before they make a bulb makes them grow bigger and have more layers. If that works for you... do it... I do not see a difference in the onions that I grow - walla walla OR sweet onions. I haven't grown red onions yet, so I may add those to my list for next year. We don't eat as many red onions but I'm always happy to try something new.

And when you cook with homegrown onions, I seem to have to use twice as many in recipes - I made black beans the other night with 3 home grown onions instead of one store bought onion (along with roasted garlic and 2 chipotle chilis, I highly recommend! DELISH!). Even when I grow over 100 onions, they never seem to last more than a few weeks because I use them so often in recipes. We just have a small city lot, so I don't think I'll ever grow more than 100 in a year. I have too many veggies that I want to grow! BUT next year I will take a whole raised bed in the front for just onions (the other raised bed will be just zinnias and cut flowers again until the wood tree logs decompose a little but more). So next year I'll have room for 2-3 varieties of onion instead of just a single variety that I've planted in spurts all over the garden. I will keep them all together to try to get them fertilized and watered on the same schedule so hopefully have larger onions next year.