Planting Onions for Seed - Seed Saving
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- čas přidán 29. 03. 2019
- In 2018 we discovered a really useful open pollinated yellow onion variety called Dakota Tears. After our initial onion seeding turned out to be a terrible disappointment, we purchased seed of Dakota Tears from High Mowing Seed in a late order with some other things we needed, almost as an afterthought. This meant the onions weren't seeded into trays in the greenhouse until April, almost 2 months later than the standard onion seeding time for this area. From the very beginning these onions were impressive, as they germinated quickly and thickly and rapidly grew to very strong vigorous seedlings. We were able to plant them out at a fairly normal time and they produced a beautiful crop of onions. They were so impressive that we decided to try saving the seed from this variety as it was open pollinated. With hybrid onions, the plants have cytoplasmic male sterility and will be unable to produce pollen, making seed saving impossible unless you cross them with a pollen fertile variety.
In terms of storage, Dakota Tears performed very well, only two onions in the overwintered onion string of 36 onions sprouted before we were ready to plant them for the seed crop. Many of the onions were starting to push rootlets through the skin at the base though. In future years I would like to store more onions for seed to be able to select for the least root and shoot sprouting to improve the storage capabilities of this variety even more.
One area which may be a problem in seed saving with onions is our population size. This year we only planted 32 onions from 36 total onions stored for seed originally. The recommended minimum population size for saving onions seed according to John Navazio in his book "The Organic Seed Grower" is 120. Saving and planting 120 onions for seed seems incredibly impractical at our scale. We don't particularly want to go into the seed selling business, and we don't have a need for producing such a huge quantity of seed that would result from so many onions being saved. Even the 32 onions we are growing out in this year will produce far more seed than we can use. We will have to see if the small population size becomes a problem in future years. - Jak na to + styl
I just found your channel and wanted to comment that your content is awesome. I have similar interest in the types of projects that you have been documenting and I have been really enjoying watching and learning. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Very nice looking onion! I store dry seeds,in their packets well labeled, in tupperware containers in the freezer. I do have 1 batch of 4 year old white onions not germinating, but the yellow and red onions, leeks and shallots are up. Chive has not germinated also. I learned alot from this video, thank you.
Cool video 👍 I have been thinking about saving seeds from my onions have not done it before. Just a long day or short day onion
Great video! I have great looking seedlings right now of Dakota Tears, I’m very impressed with them so far, uniform, vigorous, excellent quick germination. I normally start onions in January, didn’t get these sown until mid February and these have already beaten out in terms of size onions sown in January. My best prior OP onion has been Newburg but I saw Dakota tears on the OSSI website and decided to get some seed. So far it’s looking awesome!!!
I hear you on the wimpy seedlings from February seeded onions :/ I'll have to sow a second batch now. Hopefully they will do better. The ones I got are just no good.
Wait, you are growing teardrop onions, but selecting for round ones? Then a little bottleneck won't be a bad thing ;)
But honestly I've never heard of a 100+ plants being required for avoiding long term inbreeding depression. All the numbers I got on onions are in a range of 10-20 seed plants being fine. I always thought onions are not too sensitive to that. Must look that up when I get back from work today.
I'm just planning the garden layout and I think I'll have to plant my seed onions (Stuttgarter) in one big clump. I need more room to plant things. Again! lol
As far as the shape selection, there actually was something of a range in shape that I saw last year, but I kind of prefer a nice globe, so I mostly selected the nice globes from each good clump, and left any flatter or cylindrical/teardrop ones. I've never really like the long onion shape for whatever reason. This is a fairly newly created variety developed by an organic farm in North Dakota called Prairy Road Organic Farm, they've bred and released several new organic varieties in the last couple decades. The recommendations from the book are definitely geared towards an audience of commercial seed producers, so I am feeling comfortable working with much smaller population sizes. I can always mix different years of seed lots later to get a larger effective population if I need to, if I get that far.
I'm not too crazy about fancy onion shapes either. Round ones just peel easier lol plain practical reason. I still remember the year when my grandpa grew tons of small long shallots and grandma decided that it was my job to peel them all for pickling 😂 hard earned pocket money that week.
@@oxbowfarm5803, mix different years of seed lots later to get a larger effective population? I've always been led to believe Onion seed viability is very short, I started 2 pkts. of white globe that was 3 years old this spring and got 0 germination... right beside 2 year old leek seeds that had over 90% germination.
Viability is very short at room temp and ambient humidity. If you store it dry and frozen it keeps essentially indefinitely.
@@oxbowfarm5803 good to know! Thanks Tim!
Great video! The storage looks amazing with them onions . I like breeding long storage varieties without a high percentage of losses . Will some verities flower the first season planted from seeds ? Or should it be reset in the spring like rutabaga ? With rutabaga if they actually bolt the first year it is really bad to save the seed because you get a generation of early bolters
I tried some onion seeds last month here in Tennessee, some sprouted but died then I was told I have to plant onion seeds in the fall? Do you have a video on growing those beauties from the beginning? Thanks, subbed.
Excellent video. I love your farm and plant videos. I am growing Dakota tears as well. I don't have a lot of experience growing onions either. I have them growing in multi-sown blocks. The tops seem vigorous enough, but we'll see what happens when I plant them out. Would you say, if I have green onions that are 6-8" tall in the blocks (1/8" thick), that they could be set out now? This is the first year I am using any kind of row cover. I am doing really low tech poly tunnels on my raised beds for lettuce and radish. But if I put some fleece on the onions would you say now is a good time? I think my climate zone is pretty similar to yours. It's been warming up with lows still dipping into the 20's at night. You also inspired me to trial the chili varieties you trialed last year. I love growing chili peppers for drying and powder. My wife and I are totally addicted to homegrown chili powder. I bought the four varieties you trialed and I am doing some others of interest. It is amazing the difference in the seedlings. The New Mexican varieties chosen for early production are amazing. All my seeds were sown on the same day and the New Mexican peppers are 5 times bigger than the typical peppers I'm growing. Anyway, thanks for the great video and any advice on the onions you can give me. Cheers.
Yes, they could definitely go out now under some rowcover if you've got open ground.