When brainstorming reasons why my potato onions stayed so small, I never thought to consider planting date.  Last year, I put in my potato onions at the beginning of November, but the few bulbs I left in the ground this summer to finish up their bloom cycle (no seeds resulted unfortunately) started sprouting fresh leaves in mid-August.  I tend to believe that plants know best, so I went ahead and planted our summer harvest a month ago rather than waiting for the late fall date I'd chosen last year, and the onions are nearly all up.  In fact, one plant that had gotten a bit uncovered is clearly already splitting into two bulbs.

I can't remember why I planted the onions so late last year, but most sources recommend you treat potato onions like garlic, and many sources do recommend late fall planting dates for garlic.  However, I've always had great luck planting our garlic at this time of year --- the extra couple of months of non-freezing weather seems to boost my yields considerably.  I'm hopeful that planting our potato onions in late summer will give them time to produce the larger bulbs I crave to wean us off annual onions.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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