onions and garlic

[Rob the Radish]

Hi all,

I am looking for advice for overwinter onions and garlic planting in my garden.

I dont have a greenhouse or anything, so wanted to plant straight into the ground, is this possible from seed ? if so what do i need to do and when ?

First time for growing so total newbie to this.

Regards, Rob.

[MikeS]

Hi Rob

I'm by no means an expert just started this year also, but I've just put the first lot of both onion sets and garlic into the ground this week after reading that you can start in Sept.

Theres a little video on the gardeners world site which may be of interest

How to grow onions, shallots and garlic | gardenersworld.com

[VirginVegGrower]

Should really have been started in August. Sow seed into modules fast. For planting out October. Keep on windowsills. Alternatively buy/order sets for planting October.

[Chef_uk]

I planted my onion sets last year in October and they returned a great harvest for us so will be repeating the same this year You're meant to plant the sets (small onions) with the tops of them showing. I never did this through lack of knowledge and guess i got lucky as they all grew fine even though i completely buried them by a couple of cm.

If your starting from seed though, then like the others have said, that needed to be done last month so they grow to the size of a set by October.

My overwinting variety last year were Senshyu Yellow from poundland Will be buying more than 20 this time so will get them online so it works out cheaper.

[alex-adam]

The old saying about garlic is 'Plant on the shortest day, harvest on the longest'

[perkin]

Once you grow your own garlic, you'll never look back. Buy a couple of bulbs (loads of places online - here, here and here will get you started). Break up into cloves, plant out by end November and that's it really. I've not needed to do anything special apart from the odd weeding session before harvesting in June/July the following year.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Bit late to try from seed this year. Seed takes minimum 3 weeks to germinate and seedlings will atke a while to be big enough to plant out. Best to go for sets this time around. I go for senshyu yellow but there are others available.