Potato Onion 2024 Report
This page documents the 2024 results of my ongoing Potato Onion project. This project is an attempt to breed a locally adapted variety of onion that reproduces primarily via bulbs but which will also reliably set seed. You can read the backstory, motivations and goals on the Potato Onion project homepage. Note: Click on any image to enlarge it.Potato Onions
This has been quite a successful year. At the end of the 2023 breeding season I was left with 14 reasonable Potato Onion bunches. Nearly all of these made it through the winter (sorry, I forgot to record an exact number) when stored in an unheated outdoor shed. These, of course, form the Category 3 Potato Onions for the 2024 season.
The bunches were separated into two groups - taking care to make sure each group had at least one representative from each clump. One group was planted in the corner of a greenhouse for breeding purposes. This is necessary because outdoor alliums will set seed in my location but the seed heads will not ripen properly. The second group was planted outdoors in the early spring.
No effort was made to prevent either group from generating scapes and setting seed heads. Of course, since this was their second or third year, all of the onion bulbs in both groups promptly did so with considerable vigour. As expected, the outdoor group did not generate viable seed heads but the indoor group certainly did.
As you can see, there are about 20 or so reasonable Potato Onions and another 10 which may yet prove to be useful. Note that all of these onions are each the output a single bulb which set seed in the summer of 2024. Last season I speculated that the Potato Onions I am breeding might well be perennial and these results do seem to validate that idea. Instead of turning to mush like most onions, these bulbs have all originated from a single bulb which set seed and still produced a reasonable onion. Note that none of the original bulbs seemed to have survived - they were long gone by harvest time, but as well as the scape they also produced bulbs. Given that the original bulb died, I suppose "Perennial" is not really an appropriate label - perhaps "Replant Perennial" is more accurate. A gratifying number seemed to produce doubles and even a few triples.
Many of these onions look like shallots but there are a few larger ones. Along with the Long Keeping Onions, I also planted out some extremely large and tasty commercial onions of unknown type. These I had purchased at a local greengrocers and the intention is to inject some genes for size and non-splitting into the gene pool. I will have to wait for subsequent years to see how that has worked out.
All of these onions (assuming they make it through the winter) will be added to my Category 3 Potato Onion collection.
These onions will be monitored all winter and the ones which are not keeping well will be culled (eaten). In the spring, the best and most interesting ones will form the Category 2 Onions for the 2025 year. These will be planted in the greenhouse for seed and the rest will simply be eaten.
Category 3 Onions
The Potato Onions at the end of the 2024 season are shown below (click on any pic to enlarge).
As you can see, there are about 20 or so reasonable Potato Onions and another 10 which may yet prove to be useful. Note that all of these onions are each the output a single bulb which set seed in the summer of 2024. Last season I speculated that the Potato Onions I am breeding might well be perennial and these results do seem to validate that idea. Instead of turning to mush like most onions, these bulbs have all originated from a single bulb which set seed and still produced a reasonable onion. Note that none of the original bulbs seemed to have survived - they were long gone by harvest time, but as well as the scape they also produced bulbs. Given that the original bulb died, I suppose "Perennial" is not really an appropriate label - perhaps "Replant Perennial" is more accurate. A gratifying number seemed to produce doubles and even a few triples.
Category 2 Onions
The Long Keeping Onion project (designed to produce a locally adapted onion cultivar that keeps well but does not necessarily separate into bulbs) has quite a few splitter type characteristics in its gene pool. This is because it has only been a year since I felt confident enough to begin to start differentiating the two lines. In order to get some seed for this line I took the best of the 2023 non-splitting onions and planted them out into a different greenhouse so as to obtain seed from them. These onions are at the Category 2 Stage of my breeding program - in other words one year old bulbs. How does one deterimine best? Well, they had to have stored in perfect condition until spring and be a reasonable size. Taste was not tested for as that would have destroyed the bulb that I was intending to plant. Well, it appears that splitting characteristics are far more prevalent in my seed bank than I imagined. All of the Long Keeping Onion bulbs that I planted out for seed, duly set seed, and about half of them then split into bulbs as well - much like the Potato Onions. The Potato Onion output of the Category 2 Long Keeping Onions at the end of the 2024 season is shown below (click on the pic to enlarge).
Many of these onions look like shallots but there are a few larger ones. Along with the Long Keeping Onions, I also planted out some extremely large and tasty commercial onions of unknown type. These I had purchased at a local greengrocers and the intention is to inject some genes for size and non-splitting into the gene pool. I will have to wait for subsequent years to see how that has worked out.
All of these onions (assuming they make it through the winter) will be added to my Category 3 Potato Onion collection.
Category 1 Onions
In order to keep the breeding process moving forward, I also grew a large number of onions from seed. In fact, I had to do this two or three times in order to fill in the many gaps where the slugs and mice had eaten the small onion grasses I had carefully placed out. In keeping with the philosophy of Promiscuous Pollenation, I also planted seeds from common varieties which had characteristics I liked - mostly this was just a few of the larger white varieties. No attempt was made to keep much in the way of records of which bulb originated from which source. The point is that that whatever works goes into the next generation and whatever does not is culled. Do this for enough years and you have a reasonable chance of getting to where you want to go. The onions grown froms seed eventually produced a pretty good crop in spite of the weather. Onions are tough things and, if you can get them started, usually they are pretty productive (click on the pic to enlarge).
These onions will be monitored all winter and the ones which are not keeping well will be culled (eaten). In the spring, the best and most interesting ones will form the Category 2 Onions for the 2025 year. These will be planted in the greenhouse for seed and the rest will simply be eaten.