Onion Question

Hi all, I have an onion question I believe ya'll can help me with.

I planted my onions, red candy and yellow candy on Jan. 18, 2014. They started out beautiful, and since then I would say they are just sitting there. Unless something happens soon all I will end up with is 166 onion tops.

My onion bed is not in full sun, I know they need certain day length to bulb, but I believe they also need full sun. I am thinking about building 2 new beds on the edge of the pipeline, putting them on wheels so they can be moved. This way they can get plenty sun without being in the way.

Do you think that I can move these onions without killing them? I'm thinking of building the beds and getting them ready. I will then move the onions to the new bed. They do have long onion tops, but I pulled one onion up and it barely has any root system. I really don't guess it will matter anyway, they are doing nothing, do you believe this would be a viable option, giving them a fighting chance?

Well I guess I will move them, they gonna do nothing sitting where they are anyway.

I would.  No sense having them just sit there unhappy.

Putting the beds on wheels is a good idea!

you could do both, leave some where they are and move some. That way if  the moved ones died at least you'll have some left. Are your onion supposed to be finished by now or what?

Yeah, they should be done in the next 2 weeks, but they are no where near ready.

I was just told by a landscaper today that the Cape growing schedule is about three and a half weeks behind normal. Is there any chance that your area is behind due to this past winter?

Some how my onions got mixed together on the screen in the basement this winter. So I'm trying to figure out what's what. I can pretty well figure out which are the potato onions. They are the ones in the little rectangle shaped bucket. But what are the others?  Some may be shallots, some may be bulb onions, and some are Green Mountain multipliers. I don't think there's anything else. I cut open a few different ones and smelled them, but my nose is stuffy so all I could smell was slight onion scent. The bottom row in the photo shows the different kinds I found. Which is which, can anyone tell?

CC, just to be clear, all you have there are different types of multipliers, right? None are single bulb onion sets from first year?

I know the pointy ones are the shallots.

Yea!  I was hoping the pointy ones were shallots!

There are some bulb onions (some kind of sweet Spanish long day) in the photo from last year and the year before. These are two years old now they still have not reached full size. Have you ever heard of planting bulb onions 3 years in a row?

Through process of elimination, we remove the shallots and the known potato onions in the little plastic container.  The only questionable ones left are the bulb onions and the Green Mountain onions....and I'm not sure what the purple ones are, I'm pretty sure I never grew red onions.  The pile that I think maybe the bulb onion may contain some potato onions, but I'm not sure. And I can't tell the Green Mountain potato onion from the regular potato onion. Can you?

The Green Mountain are 'potato' onions, or rather multipliers. I cannot tell the difference from here and tell you which is which... Once they start growing you should be able to tell pretty quickly.

The golden round ones in the center I would bet are the bulbing onions. Any with a bit of a flat side are likely multipliers.

camprn wrote:The Green Mountain are 'potato' onions, or rather multipliers. I cannot tell the difference from here and tell you which is which... Once they start growing you should be able to tell pretty quickly.
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How will I be able to tell the Green Mountain from the other potato onions?  if they are bigger, the ones on the right side with the flattish side are bigger than the regular potato onions. So they may be the Green Mountain. Could that be right?
Which would leave the two sets of onions on the left to be the bulb onions. I think I'll just plan everything as if this were the case and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for the help, camp. I really appreciate it. It'll be fun to see what comes up and how close we were to being correct.

CapeCoddess wrote:

camprn wrote:The Green Mountain are 'potato' onions, or rather multipliers. I cannot tell the difference from here and tell you which is which... Once they start growing you should be able to tell pretty quickly.
.

How will I be able to tell the Green Mountain from the other potato onions?  if they are bigger, the ones on the right side with the flattish side are bigger than the regular potato onions. So they may be the Green Mountain. Could that be right?
Which would leave the two sets of onions on the left to be the bulb onions. I think I'll just plan everything as if this were the case and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for the help, camp. I really appreciate it. It'll be fun to see what comes up and how close we were to being correct.

I think the only way you can tell for sure the differences between the variety of multipliers is in the genetics. Regardless of the variety, I woud Keep 'em going and go with the biggest bulbs next year. Same with shallots. With the bulbing onions, choose the smallest sets for good onions this year.

for the