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Photo Credit: Mary Moore

Divide onion plants and discard any that have brown mushy parts or holes.

What would your favorite stew be without onions? These tasty little bulbs (Allium cepa and other species) are a key ingredient in many dishes, and cooking would be less exciting (and less flavorful) without them. But did you know that onions are easy to grow in your own kitchen garden?

Onion seeds are planted in fall to start small plants known as “sets,” or you can buy sets from many garden centers or mail-order catalogs in spring. (Some gardeners prefer to work with sets because they’ll usually produce large bulbs by midsummer.) As you probably know from any trip to the grocery store’s produce section, there are all kinds of onions out there: red, white and yellow varieties, as well as sweet onion types like Walla Walla.

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When buying sets, look for onions with firm white, yellow or red bulbs, and avoid those that feel slimy or mushy.

The key to successfully growing this vegetable is to have well-amended soil that’s light, friable and has good drainage. Preparing your soil in fall with chicken manure, compost and other amendments will give it plenty of time to “mellow” before planting sets in spring. To encourage root growth and bulb development, use a fertilizer with lower nitrogen (N) and higher phosphorus (P) numbers. (High-nitrogen fertilizers can encourage root rot – as can poor drainage, which leaves roots to stand in water.)

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Consider planting your onions between other vegetables – the smell of the onions can confuse some pests.

If this is your first time planting onions, consider using sets instead of seeds, and prepare your soil in fall. (I find the quick results encourage me to keep planting onions.) Plant your onions 3 inches apart in full sun. Make sure the top of the onion is just below or slightly above the surface of the soil. This encourages the bulb to form as the plant matures.

One of the really nice things about growing onions is that they have very few pests or diseases, so they’re great for planting around other crops (like squash or tomatoes) to confuse pests. The one big pest to watch out for is onion maggot – a small, gray fly that lays eggs in the soil around the onion. After hatching, the young larvae drill into the vegetable. If you see rotting holes around your onions, pull the infested veggies out and dispose of them in the trash – don’t compost them, as the larvae can mature into more flies.