Hmmmm....what's up with my onions?

[amandaandherveg]

Went out this morning and saw that two of my red onions (grown from sets have a little yellow bud at the top of the leaves). What do I do, are they bolting? I'll be devastated, the bulbs are still small . The brown onions seem ok so far. The weather has been very warm over the last few weeks with no rain until 2 days ago.

[Snadger]

Sounds like they've bolted!

A lot of reports of red onions grown from sets bolting this year methinks!

PS I don't think there was anything you could have done about it, it seems to be an inherant trait in red onion sets!

[amandaandherveg]

Sniff!! Sniff!

What do I do with them then Snadger?

[zazen999]

you can still use them, I nip off the flower and although there is a thicker inner I just chop it up finer and it's fine.
I won't be buying onion sets again though; a load of mine bolted whereas the seed onions are bigger and haven't bolted.

[Mrs Dobby]

Yep, nip off the flower and leave them be! They will still bulb up a bit more before they are ready to harvest, but they wont store well, so either use them asap, or if you've too many to use, chop and freeze them, as that way you'll be able to use them for longer! We had about half our red onion sets and about 10% of the white onion sets (total of 200 overwintered onion sets) bolt last year, so we processed them (the magimix was an absolute godsend!) and froze them, and once the fresh opnions had been used up we then started on the frozen ones, thus extending our onion crops until Feb!