Onion sets

[dave45]

How exactly do you create your own onion sets?

[JustinFun]

Once you've grown the onion from seed I don't know how you would stop the small onions from growing to make them into sets.

Why would you want to though? You can leave them where they are and they'll happily grow into onions on their own.

[JustinFun]

Just an aside JustinFun, have you noticed the scarey similarity between your avatar and Tom Good!!

I'll take that as a good sign!

[dave45]

[quote="JustinFun"Why would you want to though? You can leave them where they are and they'll happily grow into onions on their own.[/quote]

thirst for knowledge
it doesn't tell you on the seed packet
l like to know how things arrive in the shops
timing - getting it right (if you take the onions out of the ground for a few months, you can schedule your production better)
to understand onions bolting (if you replant a stored full-size onion that starts shooting again, what happens?)
what time of year do you plant seed to produce sets? does it depend on variety?
I have planted sets from November to May and got good results.

I am fairly sure all of this is dead straightforward, but I don't know it yet.

I am guessing that I plant onion seed in midsummer and pull up marble-sized onions in Oct and dry them

[Annpan]

I think they need to be heat treated, I don't know how though

[dave45]

hmm wikipedia just says "Onion sets are produced by sowing seed very thickly one year, resulting in stunted plants which produce very small bulbs. These bulbs are very easy to set out and grow into mature bulbs the following year, but they have the reputation of producing a less durable bulb than onions grown directly from seed and thinned."