Sow and grow annual onions and shallots from seed

Save money by growing hundreds of onions and shallots for only a few pounds

I always sow our brown and red onions, as well as shallots, from seed shortly after the winter solstice to coincide with lengthening days. If you haven’t grown them from seed before, it can be hard to believe they’ll grow into fully harvestable vegetables by summer, but I promise you they will! Once you grow onions and shallots from seed, you will never go back to expensive onion sets (heat treated baby onion bulbs).

The main reason I grow the onion family from seed is to prevent introducing onion white rot into our soil. Onion white rot is a soil born fungus that attacks the roots of the onion family. Once it arrives, it’s impossible to remove and will destroy your onion crops forever more. It is transferred on living onion bulbs, like onion sets and garlic cloves - never plant garlic bought in supermarkets for this reason, only from reputable sellers that screen the bulbs, such as The Garlic Farm. Onion white rot however isn’t transferred by seeds.

Sowing onions and shallots is easy,…