Seed saving

[Weedo]

Might not be a disadvantage - many of our "new" varieties originate from plants that have naturally diverged from the norm - your new variety (the Oddy Onion?) may be a ground breaking development.

[Odsox]

Saved seed onions.jpg (212.83 KiB) Viewed 33650 times

Spot the difference
Also rather maddening. I tried the white onion the other day, mainly because it had a flower stem that I hadn't noticed before, and needed to use it before the stem hardened.
Well ... it is one of the non-tear ones, as in no problems slicing it, and it is one that is so mild and sweet that even I can eat it raw.
I still don't know how it happened, it seems to be a grown up version of a spring onion, but I didn't allow any spring onions to mature, let alone flower.
Now if I want to continue growing this, I will have to re-plant one in the spring and isolate it from the others, save the seed to produce a crop in 2022. All because we ate the only flowering one.

[Green Aura]

Get to it - the odsox onion is born.

[Odsox]

Not really seed but still relevant.
I trimmed my shallots this morning after languishing on a rack in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks to ripen.
They are amazing and cheap vegetables. I have been saving this variety (Longor) for at least 10 years.
I planted 15 late last autumn and today I trimmed 156 (yes, I counted them). So even if you are short on space, in a square foot of soil, with 4 planted you could expect to get 40 back for virtually no effort.

Also, shallots have come a long way since I first started. Then they were not much bigger than garlic cloves, but now with the long varieties they compete very favourably with smaller onions.

[Viper254]

Sounds lovely - I do like using shallots

[Green Aura]

I wonder if you can do anything with the trimmings.