Growing Onions in Your Spanish Garden

Onion - Cebolla

Onions are one of the few vegetables that you are likely to be using in the kitchen almost every day of the year.
One of the aims of the Spanish vegetable garden must be to attempt to have fresh onions available throughout the year. Onions can be grown to mature at various times and will keep well if they can be hung in a dry airy place, so this aim is achievable.

Onion Plants Approaching Maturity

Onions can be grown from seed to plant out later, you can buy plants, or you can plant onions sets (small onion bulbs). Sets do not appear to be as readily available as they are in the UK but they can be found.

The main time for sowing onion seeds is December, for planting out in the spring, but it is worth trying sowings at different times to achieve a spread of maturing times.

Although onions are not difficult to grow from seed or to transplant, the easiest way to establish them is to plant sets. These are simply pushed into the prepared soil (similar to garlic) until the tops are about flush with the soil level. Ideally they do not want to be pushed very far in the soil but need to be far enough for birds etc to move them.

Blog items relating to onions
03/02/11 Planting Onions
I find that I have been able to plant onions almost any time of the year (I would avoid summer of course as it would take a lot of watering to keep th .... more

16/05/08 Self Sufficient for Onions
We are only just getting to the end of last years onions (and we use quite a lot in our cooking here) and we have new ones in the garden ready to use. .... more

18/10/07 Storing the Onions
We are pleased with our onions this year having produced some good sized specimens. We plant them at different times during the year (have already pla .... more

08/09/07 Planting Brassicas and Onions
I hadn't planned to plant either just yet. I thought the middle of October would be fine for buying some onion plants to give an early crop next year, .... more

02/09/07 Finished the Early Onions
We have just finished using the early planted onions (those that were planted last autumn) so they have kept us supplied for approximately three month .... more

06/07/07 Harvesting Onions
We have been using onions from the garden for a month or more but those we planted in the autumn have now matured (and are a good size). We have now .... more