Wilson wrote:
....
I'm under the impression that onions generally flower in their 2nd year.

yes, it really depends upon how big the bulb gets the
first year. last year about August i planted a lot of
seeds and most of one type of those seeds survived the
winter. of all of those only one is flowering this year.
if i don't thin them out more will flower next year but
not all, it's a resource competition thing. the bigger
ones will have enough energy to flower and the rest will
wait their chance to flower in the coming years.

bulbs will self space to the conditions.

i've had garlic in the same spot for over 15 years.
some of it will have scapes/flowers and others will
go dormant until the bulbs around them give them
enough space to come up again. if i dig up a clump
there will be small bulbs, larger bulbs, singles and
dormants.


Since I use sets that were grown last year by someone else, they generally
will flower, but not all.

it is size dependent. that is why there are
suggestions about what size of sets to buy.


Like my garlics, I cut off the flowers to push more energy into the fruit
rather than seeds.

for garlic the biggest difference is how big the
cloves are when you plant them and then your other
conditions. i can get thumb sized cloves in my
garlic bulbs and still leave the scapes on to
fully develope and also have scape bulbules up
to a nickle and a bit larger in size.


That said, I have a lot of success with stored seeds provided I don't hold
onto them for a long time and try to keep them cool as in the fridge.

This year, I bought some 'Bunching Onions' for scallions and read that if I
leave them in the ground, they will probably winter over and come up on
their own. Anxious to give that a try as I have left onions in over the
winter in Zone 4, eastern Maine and they all came up. Oh, and the onions I
use as sets are Stuttgart yellow onions. Rather flat then round and hold
really well. Still have 5 leftover from last year and they haven't sprouted yet.

yes, i've not seen onions killed that often if
they were first grown here to begin with. planting
out a store bought onion and expecting it to survive
a winter here isn't likely to work well though in
comparison.

i'm sprouting some scallion onions here now and
planning on leaving at least half of them for the
winter to see how they do. i hope well. i like
having a diversity in onions here. the bees
love 'em.


songbird