On the line between short day and long day onions
We live right on the line
between good growing conditions for long day and short day onions,
which I figured might be part of the problem we've had with the
crop. (In case you're curious, intermediate day onions seem to be
all sweet varieties, not storage onions). So this year I tried
two new varieties.
Pumba is a short day
onion, appropriate for people living in the southern U.S., while
Pontiac is a long day onion for northerners. I got the seeds from
the same place 
(Johnny's),
started them inside at the same time, and transplanted
them into
alternating beds so location in the garden would influence each
variety's growth similarly.
The
onions I pulled out a couple of weeks ago were all Pumba onions ---
this variety is supposed to be ready to harvest eight days before
Pontiac, so the earliness was no surprise. Pumba averaged
13.6 pounds per bed, and several of the onions had started to rot
before I pulled them up.
The leaves on Pontiac were
still green in the middle of July, so I let them go a couple more
weeks. These long day onions beat the pants of Pumba in the
weight department, coming in at 22.3 pounds per bed when I finally
harvested them Friday. A few Pontiac onions started trying to
bloom, though, which might influence their storage potential.
The conclusion?
Despite straddling the dividing line, we're clearly northerners and
should grow long day onions. Total weight of our storage onion
crop this year was 92.9 pounds, maybe enough to get us through until
next spring? Only time will tell.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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