We've been experimenting with potato onions for two years now, and I'm ready to pronounce them a failure.  On paper, the perennial onions looked like a great choice since you can easily save sets and don't have to buy seeds (and baby them in the early spring.) 


And this year's harvest looks pretty good when I tell you that I pulled about fourteen pounds of onions out of seven garden beds.  The problem is that we've never been able to get more than a few of our potato onions to exceed an inch in diameter.  Peeling enough potato onions to equal one seed-started onion would take half an hour!

I've tried every trick I could think of to get my potato onions to make bigger bulbs instead of just lots and lots of small bulbs.  I've tried different planting dates, snipped off the flowers when they appeared, and even dreamed that Eric Toensmeier was right and you have to plant small bulbs to get big onions.  No dice.

Even though we're not going to replant any of this year's potato onions, I'm not quite ready to give up on the idea of potato onions.  I've noticed that Southern Exposure Seed Exchange has stopped selling the Loretta Yellow Multiplier Onions we bought from them and are now offering a different variety.  Maybe too many people complained and they came up with a better option?

I'd be curious to hear if any of you have had better luck with potato onions.  Any onions that head up to a decent size?  If so, what variety did you grow?