Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Oliveview on May 20, 2011, 10:04

Title: onions bolting
Post by: Oliveview on May 20, 2011, 10:04

We were given around 60 small onion plants grown from seed by our neighbour.  We were going along fine, had heavy rain for Feb March and virtually all of the onions have thrown up flowers!  Pretty as they are we wanted onions!  Its not only us with onion flowers, all the neighbours have the same problem! I think we have 6 non flowering onions!
Is it due to the weather or the seeds?
Pamela

Title: Re: onions bolting
Post by: flutemaster on May 20, 2011, 10:51

hi
had similar problem,be vigilant and pick off flower heads as soon as you see them developing,seems to work for me,hopefully the energy will then go into developing bulbs
good luck
flutemaster

Title: Re: onions bolting
Post by: DD. on May 20, 2011, 12:10

Yes they will develop bulbs, but you're always going to have that bit of flower stem inside the bulb that will rot quickly once they're lifted, hence the bulbs won't store well.

Title: Re: onions bolting
Post by: Oliveview on May 20, 2011, 14:47

What causes them to bolt?  Is it the wet ground we had?
Pamela

Title: Re: onions bolting
Post by: DD. on May 20, 2011, 15:02

It's usually the3 dry spells that do it.

This is John's take on it:

http://www.allotment-garden.org/vegetable/onion-shallot/onion-problem-disease.php

Title: Re: onions bolting
Post by: gazza975526570 on May 20, 2011, 15:19

Whilst most likely to be the weather over fertilising can also contibute to it

Title: Re: onions bolting
Post by: Oliveview on May 20, 2011, 22:08

We had a quite dry December into january and the rains started towards the end Feb, so that is probably the problem.  I didn't fertilise as we were not expecting to plant.
Many thanks!
Pamela