It is recommended they be started three to four months before transplanting outside. Ideally, onion tops should be close to the diameter of a pencil in size by the time they move into your garden.
Trimming while seedlings are young is better for root and bulb formation. Trimming seedlings results in plants with more vigor, more root development, and eventually in larger bulbs—larger onions!
Early trimming will also translate into thicker and stronger greens that are more suited to life in the garden and the variations of wind and outside weather. Finally, when you trim the greens on onion seedlings, you keep the greens from becoming overly long and tangled. This makes them easier to prick out and pull apart at planting time and easier to plant, too.
It also minimizes damage to the small transplants. Almost any plant in the allium family the family of plants that onions belong to that is started indoors will benefit from trimming.
This includes any variety of onions and there will be many to choose from now that you can start from seed! It also includes shallots and leeks. Even alliums that do not have a thick base or real bulb, like chives, can benefit from trimming if their growth becomes long and leggy prior to planting out; doing so will encourage thicker greens and better root growth.
You should trim your onion starts or leeks or shallots whenever their greens become long and start to tangle or even better, just before they start to tie themselves up!
Around five or six inches is the right length to start trimming your onion seedlings. You want to keep your onion starts nice and green and healthy all the way through from germination through transplant and really until they naturally die off at harvest time. Trimming young onions is very easy.
It only takes a few minutes of your time and a good pair of scissors. Longer blades will be easier to use than short scissors. With all the dead tips removed, hold several onion tops in one hand and use your scissors to cut low on the plant.
Just lightly hold onto the tops and do not pull. You want to leave the onions between one and two-and-a-half inches tall at the base. Use sharp scissors, not a knife or dull tool, because dull implements or implements that require sawing and tugging are likely to uproot the small plants.
If that does happen because sometimes things do happen , tuck the uprooted bulb back in and cover it with dirt, making sure the tray also has adequate water to feed the disturbed roots.
Remember these leaves are their food source—the fuel for the growing onions! If you harvest them after some rainy weather they'll have a lot more moisture in them and won't dry out as well. After drying the onions in the open for a day or so, it's time to bring them under cover for a second, longer drying or "curing" process. Some people cut the tops off the onions before curing, but that's not strictly necessary.
However, if you do trim the top leaves, don't cut them any closer than one inch from the bulb. Otherwise the neck won't dry out, and the onion could rot in storage. To cure the onions, spread them out in any warm, airy place out of the sun, such as on a porch. If you find you have too many onions for your available porch space, try spreading them out near the edge of your driveway, covering them with a light cotton not plastic sheet to provide shade.
The sheet, held in place by stones along the edge, keeps the sun from burning the bulbs but still allows a lot of air circulation. Should you trim the onion stem as it is growing, or should you leave it to provide photosynthesis to nurture the bulb? Trimming an onion stem can actually promote bulb growth — but trimming it too close to harvest is not recommended.
Onions grow in USDA hardiness zones 5 to If an onion's stem is broken off, new green growth will form, and the onion will continue to grow. Be careful, however, to avoid breaking the stems late in the growing season as they are important for bulb growth. Onions are biennials that form bulbs in their first year, then generally flower in their second year before they die back, according to University of Georgia Extension.
Breaking the top of the onion plant ruins the system that delivers size-building sugars to the bulb that gardeners want to grow larger. Perhaps the onion-cutting technique has spread based on anecdotal evidence, and well-meaning gardeners who tried this trick ended up with large onions that season for another reason entirely.
Onions that are ready to harvest will naturally start to fold over. When you see this happening, you can fold over the tops of your onions and let them sit for a few days. This puts all the energy into maturing the bulb.
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