[mellowmick]

I'd gradually lost about 10% of my onions since April; just little ones not growing or drying out. Kind of to be expected. But the ones which looked OK are starting to keel over. Foliage looks good; nice and green with the odd brown tip, but it's folding over just above the bulb. This has happened to about half of them now, really just in the last 10 days. I thought they might have been nibbled at the base of the stem, but no evidence. No high winds to speak of either. Just flopping over. Any advice out there? :cry:

[milkman]

Doesn't this mean they are ripening ready for harvesting and drying??

[Heather_S]

Mine dried out quite a bit before flopping over I thought but, yes, generally flopped over means you should pull them out and let them dry on the ground for a week or in a sheltered dry area for a week before storing.

[mellowmick]

Cheers. Had hoped for them to be a bit bigger than golf balls. Any recommendations for varieties I might try for next year; ones that will actually grow into onions :?:

[Heather_S]

I've heard that onions actually need quite a bit of water so maybe just mulching them more next year or improving the soil would help a bit. I had a similar problem, my biggest one is no more than 3inches across and shaped like a skittle cheese :? Did you plant them close together? They vary in size slightly due to spacing.

[milkman]

My onions are all very small this year - I think partly because I planted the sets out far too late and partly because I haven't focussed any of my watering efforts on them.  I think I will have used them all up by the end of October!

[GrannieAnnie]

My onions are smaller than usual as well, even though I have watered them fairly frequently.  they are also not brown but beginning to fall over, but it doesn't help with the cat keep trying to dig them up!

Others wree saying that strains like Ailsa Craig are bigger onions, but don't keep as well.  Mine must be stuttgarter or something, but as I was late in buying them, I bought off ebay, and it didn't say what sort they are.

[John]

My Ailsa Craig were rather good - I'm very impressed. Onions are like most crops, plenty of food and water for best results. Lack of water this July has probably been the biggest problem in producing small onions. The wet May didn't help by promoting airbourne fungal diseases.
My Ailsa Craig cost me (I kid you not) 2p on an offer from Dobies.  I think it was buy 4 packs of seeds, get one for next to nothing.
Bedforshire Champion were OK but nothing too special and the Red baron were a diseased disaster for me but the seedlings I gave away turned into lovely onions for everyone else (grrrr)

[Oliver]

Foliage looks good; nice and green with the odd brown tip, but it's folding over just above the bulb.

This is what onions do when they are getting ready to be harvested. The tops fall over, some people actually bend them over when they think the onion is big enough. Then in a little while, dig up the whole bulb and dry it off in the sun. If it looks like rain take the onions under cover otherwise they could rot and your whole crop will be ruined.
When they are dry you can plait them into a hanging thing, or trim the leaves and roots (not too close to the bulb) and store them in mesh bags, hanging up on a cool airy place like a garage. Use the ones that look as is they might sprout first!

Onions come in all sorts of sizes and colours so leaving them in the ground hoping they will get bigger is not necessarily the answer. When the tops fall over, get ready to harvest.

They grow enough onions and shallots to last from one season to the next. Just harvested the shallots. Onions maybe a week more. They never grow red onions because she does't like them!

[mellowmick]

Cheers folks. Lucky to get any cos I planted someone else's (pretty scrawny) left-over onion sets. They're now all tied up in a bundle in the shed to dry (diagram on stringing onions discovered on-line).