I have always planted sets. My wife grew up planting sets. Sets were taken for granted as how you plant onion.




Except I have never been impressed by sets. They produce small bulbs that are prone to bolt and don't keep worth a damn. No matter the brand I bought, it was all the same.




So I did some from seeds this year.




To be honest, I could/should have slapped myself for how bad I neglected my seedlings. They would routinely dry to the point of death then I would water them again and they came back. I did not transition them to outdoors, I just planted them outside (I use soil blocks for full disclosure) when I planted all my sets.




I planted 350 or so onions total, and about 50 were my seed experiment.




All I can say is WOW. Where I planted sets, I have basically no bulb formation (per the norm). Where I planted my from seed onions, I already have store sized bulbs! And I have a few months yet to go! I did a mix of Yellow of Parma and New York Early. I forgot to label them, and I can't tell the difference as of yet.




Next year in January, I am starting about 400 onion seeds.

yep.  i've done onions from seed for two years now.  it can be a pain to start them (earlier than other seeds) and you have to trim them a few times, but i really like the results.  one thing i learned this year is that onion seed is only viable for about 1 year.  I planted seeds from last year and of 24 cells, only 1-2 came up....i kept on thinking they'd germinate, then finally i had to buy more seeds.  i lost weeks on that failed experiment.  new seeds germinated damn near overnight.  LOL

I've heard this before.  I've always planted sets too... creature of habit.  I think next year I'll try seeds instead.
Thanks for sharing your experience, OP.

We've never grown onions from sets.  It is always from purchased plants and/or seed.  

We always have baseball to softball size onions.  Proper fertilization is a key.  Just using a 10-10-10 etc is not going to get you the best results.  Higher nitrogen is important up until they begin to bulb.  Planting depth should be no more than an inch or so otherwise the plant spends more energy trying to bulb out against the soil covering it.  We usually have 2/3 of our bulbs above the soil surface.

We have actually migrated more away from seed and toward plants.  IMHO the plants are turning out to be more efficient and cost/time effective.  We plant ~400 onions/year.

Onion sets vs Onion plants

We get our plants from Dixondale in TX  http://www.dixondalefarms.com/ They look dry and questionable when you get them but come out of dormancy quite nicely.

You may want to try a combination of seeds and plants but definitely skip the sets...

This thread has some great information in it.  



That dixondalefarms site is great too!



Thanks for sharing.

Something interesting and "ah-ha!" that I learned last year is that there are different onion types based on how much daylight you receive. After I saw that info, I looked at the onion sets I had been trying, and even though they were sold in Texas, they were the variety that only bulbs if planted in the northern states.



So this year I bought the correct varieties of seeds, and we did manage to get some good-sized onions. The rest drowned. Sigh. There's always next year...

I'm so over wasting space on sets. I don't even like onions but the wife uses a lot of them. And I hate wasting the bed space for no return. So should I go seeds or plants? Ready to get some big onions. These golf ball things are a joke

Seeds take months indoors, so depends how long you want your grow lights on.

My sets grow wonderfully.  I plant them in March and harvest them maybe 1/4" larger in diameter than when I planted them.  Maybe.  Sometimes they are only as big as when I planted them in the spring.. They go through the motions of growing into big onions but never do.

This year I planted Copra long-day onions and I had terrible results, but I blame that on soil quality and not enough watering.  I'm going to try them again next year and maybe another long-day variety.  

I did have great garlic, Walking Onions and shallots though.  The shallots could have been bigger.

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