Onions are a crowd favorite, a kitchen staple used in many dishes, AND a crop found in many home gardens! Gardeners love onions because they are hardy plants that provide high yields without taking up a lot of space. However, I’m sure that you have a ton of questions regarding their growth and harvesting.
One particular question people ask a lot is: How many onions grow from one bulb?
After all, you can get a lot of potatoes when planting just one potato. Will this be also true for onions? Read on to find out!
How Many Onions Grow from One Bulb?
The short answer is NO. Unlike potatoes, only one onion grows from one bulb. The bulb you plant develops to a larger onion, though smaller onion seeds, called sets, would produce a larger onion.
About Onion Sets
Onion sets are seeds that grew for a year to reach their maturity stage. Growing onions straight from seeds would take quite some time, for at least 5 months. Unfortunately, there are areas with shorter growing seasons, making seeds challenging to grow.
That’s where onion sets come along, which are small and pre-grown onions that are ready to grow, reaching maturity at shorter times. Usually, it would take 3 months for them to mature, which is why it’s optimum to grow onions from sets if you have growing seasons that are less than 5 months long.
Fortunately, they’re inexpensive and fairly easy to find from gardening stores. Just make sure that you invest in these seeds during winter for a guaranteed order and delivery come early spring.
Because onion sets are grown from seeds, you should still expect the same thing: One onion will grow from one onion seed. Compared to seeds though, it would take about 3-4 months to grow onions from bulbs or sets. Be sure to harvest onions at the correct time so they won’t bolt then turn into seed, making them hard to consume.
How to Get More Than One Onion from One Plant
It is disappointing learning you can only grow one onion per bulb or seed (at a time). After all, we all want more than one per plant we grow!
If that’s the case, there are other ways you’re able to harvest multiple onions from one plant. Here are other plants you may want to consider growing:
Green Onions
Green onions are green stems extending above your onion bulb, which are known as scallions. If we count one scallion per stem, then there are about 3-10 scallions for every onion bulb.
For those who want to grow green onions from onion bulbs, they should be harvested way before the regular onions need to be, usually before the bulbs begin forming. You can harvest green onions once they are around 5 inches tall with a diameter of 6 millimeters, which is the diameter of a pencil.
You can also invest in variants of onion plants made to grow for scallions, known as Welsh Onions or Bunching Onions. These are easy to grow and maintain, requiring little care, and can grow in almost all types of soil, making them great for beginners.
Flowering Onions
If onions were left in your garden for a long time, they will eventually develop into flowers. These flowers would don spherical shape heads that are made up of little blossoms. They would come in either blue, pink, or violet colors, though commonly grow in white.
You can harvest the seeds of these flowers to plant even more onions, though they need to be harvested at the correct time! You need to collect the seeds before the flowers bloom. Once they bloom, the flowers will then release all the seeds to the ground.
So if you have onion flowers that haven’t bloomed yet, you can harvest them by cutting the flowers from their stems, then let them dry out. It should be bone dry, though it should not shrivel. After it dries, rub the flower with your hands and it will shed seeds, which you can use come growing season. These seeds will be able to last for up to a year!
Wrapping It Up
When it comes to growing onions, it would take multiple seeds or sets to harvest more onions! One seed or bulb equals one onion, so plan accordingly as you prepare for the upcoming growing season. If you want to get the most out of your onion plants, there are different ways, such as harvesting scallions and flowering onions.
Hopefully, my article helped you out. Go ahead and begin planting your favorite vegetables now. Good luck!
