First 2026 Seeds Sown

This week, we cleaned up our seed starting shelves and re-installed all the outlets, timers, and heat mats. We then kicked off the 2026 garden season by planting two flats of onions and shallots. We usually grow onions from starts, but since we were successful in growing shallots from seed last season, we decided to try our hand at onions. We are trialing four day-long onions from Johnny's Seed: Red Carpet (red onion), Frontier (white onion), Patterson (yellow onion), and Ailsa Craig (yellow onion), as well as growing Zebrune shallots again. These shallots have stored well for us; we have had a couple sprout in basement storage, but the rest have held up well over the six months since harvest.

Onion seeds are very small, so I tried out a hand-held seed dropper Maggie picked up somewhere. It took a little practice, but worked well. I am also trying an upgraded seed starting soil mix. Floret Farm posted a video about trials they did growing flowers in seed starting mix versus a blend of seed starting mix supplemented with a small amount of compost, bone meal, blood meal, and kelp meal. The results were amazing. I did not have any kelp meal but had the other ingredients, so am giving the mixture a try. Onions spend a long time in the seed trays, so the upgraded mix seemed to make sense. There is always something new to try in gardening.

While we have gotten onions from our garden in past seasons, we have never gotten large ones from the bulk onion starts from the hardware store. The hope is that by growing day-long onions, which are adapted to our climate and daylight hours, we will get more consistent results. We'll see what we get in August.