We don't always grow onions in our garden. Just sometimes. And I'm not sure I've ever been the one entirely in charge of them before. I started out with 5 overpriced organic onion plants from a mail-order place. It was early April, and they came in a tiny pony pack, so I kept them in my windowsill for a while. Eventually, I transplanted them to a larger pony pack and put them in the greenhouse after I set it up, and from there they went into 4" pots prior to going out to the garden. They are doing very well, and for the price I paid, they better thrive!
Late in April I bought a bundle of onion plants from a local greenhouse. I think there were 42 of them. I kept them in the cool basement while waiting for my husband to till the garden, dampening them a bit now and then. After 2 1/2 weeks it occurred to me they could be planted in pony packs and put out in the greenhouse, too. They were very pale from being in the dark, as you can see in the above photo.
In the foreground are the 5 onion plants from the mail-order place. In the background are the onions I had stored in the basement; they greened up in just three days in the greenhouse.
The five onions plants from the mail-order company settled in very nicely when I planted them in the garden.
Only 4 or 5 of the 42 onion plants from the local greenhouse grew properly, like this, and the smaller one farther up the row, to the right.
Most of them just died and went flat, like this. Boo-hoo-hoo! I texted a local friend, a younger gal who is an excellent gardener, about the onion situation. She replied, "It's been such a weird spring. I've lost a ton of seedlings that were doing just fine 'til they weren't...I still have no idea why."
So I bought more onion sets locally! These were already planted in potting soil, whereas the first ones had not been when I bought them. But these were smaller, and I wondered how they would do.
So I planted them and hoped for the best. There were more than I had anticipated, as in about 60. I filled my onions row, plus the half-row where the lettuce didn't come up. Most of them are still alive. They don't appear to be growing, but at least they aren't dead. That's a good start. Here's hoping the end of the onion story isn't as sad as the earlier part was.