SAVING ONION SEEDS
Onion Seed
Onions going to seed
HOW DO I SAVE THE SEEDS WHEN THE GREEN ONIONS GO TO SEED SO THAT I CAN PLANT THE FOLLOWING YEAR?
Saving onion seeds
It is easy to save onion seed, all you have to do is wait until the flowers begin to dry out and the seeds are ready to fall. Don’t wait to long or you will loose your seeds to the earth.
When the onions seeds are black and they fall out easily harvest the flowers and put them in a bag or on a tray and rub those until the seeds fall out. If the onion seeds are not black and if the seeds do not fall out easily then the onions are not ready to harvest.
Onions are a biennial plant which means that they go to seed the second year. Sometimes sets will go to seed the first year but you don’t want to save seed from first year seeders as you should collect your seeds from plants with the most desirable characteristics.
Onions can also be hybrid or open pollinated and you need to save seed from open pollinated varieties if you want them to be true to seed. Open pollinated seeds will produce off spring with the same characteristics as the parent plant. Hybrids produce unpredictable seeds.
The onions in the picture are Walla Walla’s and they are an open pollinated variety that produces a sweet early onion. We save our best keepers and replant them in the late fall or early spring with lots of mulch over their tops. The next season they produce a seed head and we collect their seeds when they are black and fall easily from the plant.
Plant a seed and watch it grow!
Farmer Dave
Let me know if this answers your question
