Grow winter onions - Tips

In this day and age we're all trying to save money, and what better way to do this than growing your own vegetables. Gardening a couple of times a week burns calories and can help you lose weight and keep fit, plus you have the benefits of lovely fresh vegetables at the end of it, and we should all be inluding more fruit and veg in our diet.

Don't have a garden? Consider taking on an allotment then not only will you reap the benefits listed above, but you'll be part of a growing community (excuse the pun!). Or maybe you could share a garden with someone who can't manage to work theirs themselves. Many towns are now developing garden-share schemes for example Totnes in Devon, which is becoming a transition town.

The main benefit of growing winter onions is that as you are planting them in October, they have a much longer growing season, and generally more consistent weather, so you have much bigger onions earlier than main-crop onions.

I also find that they're less likely to bolt due to the more consistent weather conditions. My biggest winter onion grown this year weighed one and a quarter pounds.

Taste wise, they are every bit as good as main crop onions.

First source reputable onion sets. The two varieties I have tried have been Senshyu, a Japanese variety, golden-skinned and globe-shaped. The other is Radar a good white onion.

As with garlic I plant the sets just below the soil on ground which is well tilled, and which was manured the previous year (learn how to grow really fat garlic - click here.)

I feed the onions with an organic manure once between autumn and Christmas, and then throughout the growing season the next year.

Some growers, once they have the soil just right to grow a good crop of onions will keep onions on that patch forever. I don't do this, fearing that disease could build up in the soil and easily wipe out the whole crop, so I rotate my onions as part of my usual crop rotation plan.

As with garlic, it's important to keep the crop well weeded, and this is where a good, sharp hoe comes in. When planting it's a good idea to leave enough room between each set, so that the hoe can get through, otherwise you'll end up hand-weeding. If you don't have a good hoe see if you can persuade someone to buy one as a garden gift for you, then you can keep them weed free over winter.

Once you have the equipment, it's easy to keep it sharp using a whetstone. My whetstone was a Christmas gift from my son, cost around two quid and is one of the most useful garden tools that I have. Working with sharp tools makes a job so much easier.

By early summer, winter onions will be huge.  I had so many questions about mine this year from fellow allotmenteers that I may put up a poster pointing them towards this Hub!

Onions are ready for harvesting when the tops go brown and die back, however, I don't always wait for that.  If the chef needs onions to cook my supper I pull them up whilst still green, knowing that if I run out of winter onions I've plenty of main-crops still to come.  Using them green seems to make no difference to the flavour.  They're just as good. 

Whenever you decide to harvest the onions just lift them with a garden fork and leave them lying on the soil for a few days to dry out.  Have a contingency drying out area (child's bedroom, airing cupboard, partner's side of the bed) if the British weather decides to rain for six months.

I don't fuss over my onions too much, simply twist off the brown tops and rub off any loose skin and soil. Garden experts tell you that Senshyu doesn't store very well, I find that it does, but has to be scrupulously dry first, so with this variety I take off a little more skin than usual to make sure there are no damp areas.

I store the onions in my little polythene greenhouse, which I mention in my Grow Garlic - Save Money Hub (read more here).

Good luck - get growing!

 This is my sister in law's recipe for Dutch onion soup.  Her recipe includes meatballs, as her Dutch family love their meatballs, but we often eat it without.

Cook 500g diced onion in butter until soft, but  DO NOT BROWN IT.  in a pan boil 1litre of water with a stock cube.

In a pan make a roux with 30g of butter and 40g of plain flour, then gradually add a small carton of single cream, with 50mls of milk.  Slowly add the boiling stock and keep stirring.

Season with salt, black pepper, rosemary, a bayleaf, marjoram, thyme, basil and crushed garlic.  Add a small glass of white wine.

If you want to add meatballs, do it now.  The Dutch meatballs are made from good quality ground beef, simply rolled into balls about the size of a Malteser (I guess 1.5cm diameter).

Simmer for thirty minutes and serve with fresh bread and if you're feeling really piggy a side dish of grated cheese.