As a home cook, you’re probably familiar with sweet onions. They’re excellent for roasting, caramelizing and are tasty when consumed raw in a sandwich or salad! Sweet onions don’t keep long and are usually consumed straight from the garden during summer-fall months.
Due to higher water content, they are milder than winter storage onions and are sweeter in flavor. In this post, I want to share a list of 5 heirloom sweet onions you can grow from seed.
How to Grow Onions from Seed
It’s not difficult to grow onions from seed, but it does take time. Lots of it! Sweet onions should be started indoors 10-12 weeks before your last average frost date of the year.
They take a long time to mature (110-125 days on average), and a head start is absolutely necessary if you are going to have onions of substantial size by harvest time.
My all-time favorite book on gardening walks you through how to start onions from seed indoors and also, how and when to transplant into the vegetable garden. Directions will also come on the back of your seed packet with specifications for your specific variety as well.
Heirloom Sweet Onions You Can Grow from Seed
Here’s a list of sweet, heirloom onions you can grow from seed. If you want to feel like a wise and worldly gardener, take time to learn the pronunciation for each variety. Your friends will be impressed (and so will I)!
1. Bianca de Maggio
- Color: white
- Type: sweet onion
- Size: 2-3 inches
- Shape: flat cylinder
- Get it here: Sow True Seed
2. Cippolini Red Onion
- Color: red
- Type: sweet onion
- Size: 1-3 inches
- Shape: round top with flat bottom
- Get it here: Burpee’s Seed
3. Cippolini Yellow Onion
- Color: yellow
- Type: sweet onion
- Size: 3-4 inches
- Shape: flat cylinder
- Get it here: Sow True Seeds
4. Flat of Italy
- Color: red
- Type: sweet onion
- Size: 2-3 inches
- Shape: flat onion
- Get it here: Baker Creek Heirloom Seed
5. Red of Florence Onion
- Color: red
- Type: sweet onion
- Size: 4-8 inches long
- Shape: torpedo
- Get it here: Baker Creek Heirloom Seed
How to Keep a Year’s Supply of Onions on Hand
If you love using onions in the kitchen, I highly recommend growing both sweet and winter storage varieties. Here’s why.
Sweet onions can be harvested throughout the summer and autumn months for immediate use. They don’t keep well, but they are delicious and go well with grilled meats, potato salads, fermented vegetables and all those summer dishes we love so much!
With sweet onions providing for the kitchen, you can let your storage onions grow until they fully mature. After they are harvested and cured, storage onions can be stored away for winter use. A good keeping onion will take you through into the spring months (get my list of heirloom storage onions here).
You might say sweet onions cover the summer season and the storage onions will supply what you need for winter.
In Conclusion
Both sweet and winter storage onions play an important role in your home cooking if you’re trying to be self sufficient in your onion harvest.
And be forewarned: once you grow your own onions, you’ll never want to go back to a supermarket onion. The flavors can’t be beat (nor can the crying, either!).
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