[pgkevet]

These were planted early april..and a number are sening up flower stalks. The onions are still small (of course) ..pull or leave longer?

[Lesley Silvester]

Have you tried removing the stalks? I don't know if it works but might be worth a try.

[pgkevet]

Have you tried removing the stalks? I don't know if it works but might be worth a try.

Google suggests it deosn't help.

A tad frustraing since I;ve never been successful with onions before and this year I've made a special effort and they are grwoing really well. This is all in one of the 5 rows and I'n hoping that that bag was just poorly heat treated. Another row sourced same time is different onion type then there are two rows sourced postally and one row from seed (about 100 per row).

The affected ones came from a cheap shop...I'm guessing that from storage to shop heat before sale and then planted when still cool outside has confused the sets???

[Marches Farmer]

Worth getting them from a good supplier. Mine always come from Dobies or Marshalls and I store them as suggested before planting. 

[pgkevet]

I had my 'proper' order booked for end april delivery ... then the weather turned milder so i bought an extra couple of hundred locally... one bag of which are the one's bolting planted early april.

Fingers crossed the other 4/500 will be OK.

..and I've just seen all my crappy typos...<sigh>

[Mammyshaz]

My experience of bolting onions is that once they start there is no going back. The onion sets go off once the start of seeds has begun.I tried assorts including cutting off the main flowering stalk and cutting all the shoots to ground level. Nothing seemed to help 
I had little success with onions until I started purchasing them from the allotment assoc. Before that I bought cheap sets from local stores, not so cheap when you lose them all to bolting. I don't pay much more but have 100 % success 

[ellied]

Mine came from the garden centre and a few of those are bolting too   Paid over the odds compared to cheap loose purchase ones so pretty disappointed.  Shallots from the same place seem ok so far touch wood. 

Garlic is starting to brown off, not sure if it's ready or just too dry as I'd not managed watering while I was ill and the weather has been quite dry and hot.  Presume I'll need to dig one up to have a look but have started watering anyway..

[pgkevet]

watering a big problem here too. My first year I put sprinklers on and ran my borehole dry - an expensive lesson in managing it's resource after the pressure vessel lining got damaged by particulate matter and we were without water for 2 weeks until borehole refilled and settled.

Last year my neighbour famer sent me a euro tank of water down but that 1000L was only enough for one drink per plant which worked to get them through a 2 week dry spell. This year I've been using a barrel and hose and dipping cans into the barrel and rationing about 3-400L a day which is well within my borehole capacity but with the greenhouse use and then another 20-30 watering canfuls on the veggie patch it's a chore and each row gets watered about every 3 days late evening to maximise effect.

My nearest reliable stream is 130yds and that's a lot of pipe and pump cost - hard to justify.

[Simon O]

You cannot save them, might as well eat now as salad onions or cook with them removing the central stem, you can eat it but the longer it's left the harder it gets

[pgkevet]

You cannot save them, might as well eat now as salad onions or cook with them removing the central stem, you can eat it but the longer it's left the harder it gets

I had come to the same conclusion...

[Fleecewife]

As they're no use for anything once bolted, why not leave the stems to flower?  Bees  absolutely love them, and they won't be getting in the way of the good onions.  When your crop is ready it's easy to see which have bolted as the dried flower stems stick up whereas the leaves of the good onions have died down.
If you leave them long enough you get mini onion plants growing round the flower head, and these can be potted up for a free crop.

Some years I've had a good onion crop, but mostly I get a few bolting, or they're tiny and puny.  I have had a monster crop once or twice though.  This year all is looking good so far 

I hope not too many more of your crop bolt - very frustrating after the work of planting them.

[pgkevet]

Some of the mail-order one's are starting to bolt too. As you say - frustrating when you plant 500 bulbs and keep them hand weeded. the mail-order stuff was planted within 2-3 days of arrival from a specialist onion and seed potato merchant.

I still have about 100-150 onions from seed as a final back-up ('cos I'm like that ) but I ust adit that sowing in modules of 3/4 seeds per was dissapointing. Germinations were fine but probbaly 2/3rds of the seeds failed to thrive in 40-module trays. I think they really need bigger modules r at least deeper ones and those root -trainer thingies are a silly price if I was to use them.

Ho-hum. At leats my other nemesis of parsnips seem to be doing OK so fat... decent lush growth and weeded and thinned yesteday about 1 and a half 20 meter rows.

I should get my first picking of broad beans today and my first field courgette.

[ellied]

I was thinking perhaps leave them and get free seeds for next year?  Happy to make bees happy but more interested in onions.. hadn't thought of wee ones growing around the base tho, might leave my bolted ones put and see what happens thanks

I had my first rasps yesterday, not many ripe yet but those first few that turn red are my favourite all year

Less happy that my bean pyramid appears to have sprouted a massive rogue potato in the centre   Can tatties be moved or do I grow beans around it and have half a meal one day, or pull it out and discard which seems a shame but may be haunting me for years to come..

[Fleecewife]

<<I was thinking perhaps leave them and get free seeds for next year?  Happy to make bees happy but more interested in onions.. hadn't thought of wee ones growing around the base tho, might leave my bolted ones put and see what happens thanks >>

ellied - they actually grow from the flower head.  Where each floret has been it develops a seed, and these seeds sprout up there - weird    I don't know if it works for every kind of onion, but it's worth a try and nothing lost.

[Fleecewife]

<< Germinations were fine but probbaly 2/3rds of the seeds failed to thrive in 40-module trays. I think they really need bigger modules r at least deeper ones and those root -trainer thingies are a silly price if I was to use them.>>


You can get trays of deeper modules - they are larger overall than normal seed trays and hold I think 77 modules.  I use them for starting off leeks.  They are more difficult to get the plantlets out of than with root-trainers, but if you stick a pencil through the hole in the bottom that works fine (no rudeness intended  )
I think I got mine in an ordinary garden centre - probably Klondyke.  Mine have lasted for a number of years now and are still going strong.