Japanese Onion Sucess Rate.

Hi. To be honest, yes, you should have had more than that.  Did they succumb to rot or disease of some sort? Mine have rotted in the past. Now I add sharp sand and compost to the soil and also plant them in a small ridge. All this helps drainage. Out of about 200 sets planted on 10th November, I had just a couple of non starters and five went to seed. Oh and I also raked in plenty of BFB before planting. I thought I had left them a bit late to be honest, but I have had my best ever crop so will be following the same method this year. It will be the fourth consecutive year planting in the same bed. Hope that helps.

Mine have been really good this year because of the mild winter, only a few have gone to seed, and like Steve, had a couple of non-starters.  I didn't do anything special apart from a dose of onion fertilizer and some chicken pellets for luck.  Oh, and I had put some potash on earlier. The variety was Radar and they were planted at the end of September after the broad beans and fleeced over winter.

You can tell if the loss was due to white rot, as the onions would have had white thread sort of bits on the bulbs under the ground.

I do hope it wasn't this, but it is worth checking.

I buy a bag or two of sets and plant mid Sept and always have failures - i just plant more than needed to make up for losses.. I just use them initially as green onions then when they bulb up as normal but small'ish onions before the main crop are ready to start munching on.. I never ever buy onions - totally self sufficient..

I've just pulled the last of the winter onions today so will have to start on shallots and main crop onions as they start bolt..

Don't fret Lass, what you need is to have a different mind set.
Yes, your crop could be described as a little underachieved, but with your crop being a little better, Autumn onions are very useful. First of all be wary of many red onions, they often fail more than the whites/yellows.

My results were about as expected. I planted 50 Senshyu  and 50 Radar onions. 10% were a total washout that never did a thing, and often happens with a proportion. Probably 15% went to seed but those are always used as green onions from April onwards anyway. 15% ended up quite small. That leaves 55% as good sized eaters. With experience you'll soon get to that percentage and higher. One thing you do end up noticing is which batches and varieties perform better. The Senshyu this year were far better than my Radar.

So:
1.... eat those throwing up flower spikes as very tasty green onions.
2... Use the smaller onions also as green onions also, or as pickling onions when ready.
3... These onions stop you munching into your Summer onions too early.
4... The crop helps a tad with stopping some beds being left bare over Winter.
5... Virtually no effort required with over Winter weeding.
6... They render a bed empty in May to June which is always quite useful for eg.later brassicas/sweet corn, or a Summer green manure sowing when it is warm enough to get a fair bit of nitrogen out of legume manures.

When viewed as above all of a sudden the crop is well worthwhile for the little effort, and no more than a £1 or two. It's all about understanding why different crops are sown. Japanese crops have a quite different purpose than the Spring sown. White rot apart, I get 90% success rate with Spring sown, and they store so much better.

Thank you for taking the time to reply beesrus, you have made me feel loads better about my small harvest.  I guess this veg growing business is a little harder than I expected it to be, but in then I have grown something and learnt loads along the way.  Also there are loads of people on here with some good advice.