White Spear Onion
Allium fistulosum • Open-Pollinated
Old-fashioned stumpy carrot that blasts through clay soils
Perennial Green Onions! How brilliant to always have this ingredient on hand. White Spear is a gorgeously large, blue-green variety that is also marvelously heat-resistant.
JOY MAX SCALE ✦✦✦✦✧
✦ Upright growth with no flopping, vigorous and easy to clean. So perfect that you don’t even need to cut the tops off.
✦ Bunching onions are a great place to start if you’ve never grown onions before. For larger onions, you should get starter sets from a local nursery but bunching onions are very satisfying to grow from seed.
✦ Since they are perennial, you only need to grow them from seed once and from there you’ll divide them as they slowly spread out. Unless you eat them all.
✦ Large, beautiful globe-shaped flowers attract pollinators but pests aren’t very interested in onions.
✦ Onions are a rich source of quercetin, a natural substance that suppresses the proliferation of some types of cancer cells.
✦ Open-pollinated
Basic Growing Information
Space clumps of 10 seeds 6-12" apart. Sow 1/2" apart 1/4-1/2” deep. Keep well weeded so that plants receive maximum light. You may prefer to start indoors and set outside once onions are sturdy enough to transplant though some say onions grown in the ground will be hardier and grow larger than transplanted ones.
Pisum sativum HARDINESS ZONE: Annual 3-10 PLANT HEIGHT: 5-6” PLANT WIDTH: 1” SEED SPACING: 1/2-1” SEED DEPTH: 1/2-1" Do not thin. IDEAL TEMP: 55-70°F GERMINATION: 6-10 days DAYS TO MATURITY: 65 SOIL: Loose, loamy, well-drained, not too much nitrogen LIGHT: Full Sun
Seedlings may take their time emerging and may look like grass when they arrive so make sure you mark their spot with a marker so you remember where you’ve planted them.
Tips for Growing Onions
Grow onions and other roots crops in light-textured soil free of pebbles and stones. This will ensure roots do not split or become malformed.
Bunching onions are cold-hardy and may be left in the ground year-round where the ground doesn’t freeze. Where the ground does freeze, most varieties should be transplanted into a greenhouse or cold frame and moved out again in the spring.
Onions require light, fertile, well-drained soil with lots of organic matter. Onions are heavy feeders requiring abundant potassium and phosphorous for good bulb formation. Nitrogen should be abundant during the period of active leaf growth. The secret is a timed release, balanced granular fertilizer. Mix it into the soil before planting. This will make your onions more sweet and mild. You also won't cry nearly as much when you chop them up. Give them more fertilizer 3 weeks after planting.
When watering onions, it's important to keep the soil moist, but not wet. Onions tend to rot easily in soggy soil. You don’t need to water as long as their root systems aren’t deep. It's a good idea to water onions in the early morning or evening hours. Since you are not watering very deeply, you don't want the sun to evaporate the water from the surface of the soil before it can penetrate it. Mulch definitely helps retain water lost this way.
Onions and weeds do not mix. Your harvest will be sad if you let those weeds crowd your onions.
Seed Saving
Cut whole seed heads when they open and show the black seeds. Thresh gently and winnow to remove debris and hollow seeds. Isolate from other Alliums of the same species by at least ½ mile.
Companion Planting
Alyssum, beans, carrots, lettuce, celery, corn, melons, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, radishes, spinach, and turnips. Avoid alliums: onions and garlic.
