Oh onions.

Eat em now Loofah, mine have all bolted, they do that at this time of year. If they are too tough to eat raw, stew them up

 

Why have they bolted? all I do is remove the flower heads which puts energy back into the bulbs. I still get a good crop of onions.

 

Mine too. Don't forget Wilkos onions setts are 50% off (69p a nett) at the moment if you want to plant some more.

I might try just thinning those setts planted in trays for picking small as 'Spring Onions' - now in cold frames - just to see how big the reamaining ones get. Perhaps they'll be less inclined to bolt as they are pampered:

 

Is this for over wintered (Japanese) onions? or "normal" ones. Different beast, so-to-speak :thumb:

 

I've never grown overwintering onions, I'm guessing they were sets.

I think they heat treat them, to supposedly stop them bolting, but the natural thing for an onion that has gone through a winter is to seed early the following spring.
Sometimes you cant fool nature.
Once they form a seed head the bulb is never the same, but it is edible, so I would just cut the head off and use when I wanted, from now onwards.
I only grow from seed now sown in late winter, find it much more reliable than sets.

 

any onions I have shown and grown them for 25 years with no problems of removing flowers and still getting good yields

 

I thought that was only for "Summer" onions? Could be wrong though ...

 

Just to be sure: You are talking about Japanese Onions, rather than normal "Summer" onions, right?

 

I remember when Jap onions first became popular and it was plant seed in late Aug and thin, dont transplant, or they would bolt following spring.

I'm thinking, (might be wrong) that jap onion sets are a reasonable new idea, and I thought some kind of treatment was required to all sets in order to stop bolting.

Its not natural to stop an onions growth, and then expect it to grow away again without bolting.

I could be wrong, very easily.

But after finding more and more sets bolting, I've now given up on them and just grow from seed.

 

Good point, same thinking must apply to Summer onions - heat 'em to kill the flower bud.

The other advice, for Summer onion sets, is to only buy small sets.

But I grow my Onions from seed as I get better results than I ever did when I grew them from sets, and it ain't half as much faff as I was lead to believe it was going to be!

 

I don't think Red Baron is an Autumn planting onion, but happy to be corrected. Did the sets come from somewhere reputable Loofah?

Autumn planting needs a Japanese-onion type (like Senshyu), or one of the particularly hardy varieties (like Electric, Shakespeare, Radar, Autumn Champion), and specially prepared "Autumn" sets