The most informational gardening channel out there! Thank you for all the effort you put into these videos.

Agree with folks' sentiments that yours is perhaps the most information- and data-dense gardening/growing channels out there - and also so pleasant and chill to watch! I love your style. Keep up the phenomenal work!

Great Trial😊

Bruce, your results for storage will no doubt be interesting and informative: length of storage is an important factor (for me) when choosing a variety to grow. I'm regularly disappointed by the poor storage characteristics of most varieties of onions, especially red onions, and have recently been planting more onion-like shallots, like 'Zebrune,' which keep very well, almost into summer, providing a close to year-round supply. When cooking, I use onions as one of several base ingredients, rarely by themselves, so taste is not a crucial decider. Thanks for all your illuminating research!

As for the taste test... I've found that the smaller the full-grown onion, the intenser the taste. So some of these may have been bred for pungency rather than weight. The colorful onions have a secondary use as garnish because they are more attractive in salads and preserves.

Great harvest... Explore it’s storage compactly, with a few from each.

Another great trial. I've grown the Craig and various types of the Tropea onions, and they're nice sweet onions for fresh use but I had no luck keeping them. As a general rule, the sulphur compounds that make onions spicy are also what inhibit bacterial and mold growth, so the hotter the onion the better it keeps. Here in the States we have an open pollinated variety Dakota Tears which is excellent and of course Stuttgarter onions are excellent keepers. I also grow lots of Walla Walla sweet onions which are a customer favorite, super sweet and mild, but they only keep for a few weeks because of that. Thanks for another great video.

I look forward to future videos on this topic!!❤

Excited you picked Ailsa Craig. I did some research on OP varieties and this was the one I settled on. I've seen contradicting notes on it's storage so I would be keen to find out if you are going to store them how they did for you.

Thanks Bruce, I've been having a rough week and this video is a great pick-me-up. I never get tired of your variety trials!

Excellent onion video. Will use this for reference again I'm sure.

For your taste test you might consider rinsing sliced onions in water, a chef KZfaqr Josh Weissman, recommends it every-time he includes raw onion in a recipe

It's awsome how you just mention the right word to avoid the angery nerd and let me know that you know what you are talking about. Much love!

very valuable results ! appreciate your effort in documenting this.

So many trials this year! Thanks for all the great info!

A very interesting trial! This past summer, we grew a number of different onions from seed, specifically chosen for storagability, then got sets as well. It was a terrible growing year overall. However, we had two elongated red onion varieties, Tropeana Lunga and Red of Florence, that still managed to do well. The Tropeana Lunga were particularly large. After harvesting, while I had them hanging to cure, they kept trying to grow! So we ate them, first. Both varieties were tasty and we really liked the elongated shape. Much easier to handle for chopping! The Red Baron variety we tried to grow was a bunching onion. They were a complete fail. 😞

Your content is the best well put together on varieties. I watch each different episode several times as they are so full of information. I just wish I was able to source the same seeds as you have here in the USA. Keep at it!

I've failed at growing onions from seed. After 3 yrs I finally got a decent harvest of yellow onions. I will definitely continue planting until I get a consistent yield. In my location we can plant in the fall and spring. The summers are above 38 C and this year it was near or at 40 C for over 100 days.

Thank you so much for creating these videos. They are so informative 👏. A lot of people ask me why I grow onions as the have been reasonably cheep to buy and maybe not noticeably a great different in taste. But for me I love having onions in the garden and I find that since growing we eat so much more. I have had issues with growing red onions and have also come to the conclusion that red barron works best for me. I have had mixed results with seeds and with planting a lot from early in the year do run out of space for seedlings, and for that reason only I also grow sets to get enough yo store through the winter. Thank you Bruce and Fiona 👍

Just got into onions and will be doing by seed next year

Amazing level of detail like nowhere else. Thank you

Thanks Bruce, my context for growing onions where I am is different, needing to limit myself to intermediate types, but I really appreciate your modeling of how to run trials, and the complexities of interpreting the results. Keep up the good work.

Incredibly useful and informative! Thanks so much!

Great video once again. It is all so interesting. A real testament to the oh so many variables when it comes to vegetable production. You really never now what you are going to get from one season to the next. I agree with you, that you have to grow something over a few years to see how it performs. I over do it and will grow a variety for 5 years to see if it is worth it to keep as a staple variety. I have also found a difference from the early gardening years to now as far as what I want to eat from the garden. Diversity is delicious! 😊

I could not love this channel more! you have taught me so much, thank you!!

amazing results

Wow! This gives me so much more to look for as I start my onions for the year here in a few weeks. So much more to growing successfully than I ever imagined. Thank you for this!

The Cipolle de Tropea look amazing and would definitely be the kind to attract me in the store. I'd be a bit worried that the big ones are a bit bland, as you sometimes have with big onions. Also shoutout to pickled onions (preferably red) which is a great way to store onions ready for use and I make a lot of.

Wow. Thank you for doing this. It is beyond interesting and i am keen to hear everything you're doing. Keep up updated on storage for the globos, please. Great video

Good on you Bruce - my multisown onions are underway now (nearly summer here). I grow Creamgold, an excellent yellow skinned keeping onion (the middle sized ones keep the best - the big ones the worst). They last all winter if cured properly. I love growing onions like this. Great video !

Trying to be scientific with plants is so fkn hard. We grow 12 hectares of raspberries every year, exact same variety, split into 12 blocks of varying sizes. We plant them in a staggered fashion with the goal to be harvesting raspberries for 11 months of the year. They are all in tunnels and all hydroponic, so largely controlled environment and controlled diet. You would not even believe the level of variance we get due to a cold week or a wet week or a particularly hot week. Then there is water pressure, pest pressure, nutrient variance, power failures... I enjoy these types of analysis videos that you do and I'm sure it helps you make some informed decisions about what you're willing to grow in the future, but you could grow those same varieties every year until the end of time and the variation would be astonishing. At the end of the day, taste is always king. Take care bud.

Cooked onions are nice but raw onions are so delicious! What about using red for raw taste test and one or two white for raw as a comparison? Good luck with it! Thank you

My favorites are Alisa Craig and Globo :)

It would probably be good to pick half and half varieties that do well in dryer years and wetter years so that you end up with a good crop regardless of the weather conditions

Good one as usual. I do sets and starters here in Japan.

Wow thank you. Haha the taste test may have to be done over time 😁😋. The globo look amazing on the whole, except for long term storage. Malcolm at allotments for fun and food swears by them. They look an absolute work of art when cut open. Really beautiful. Fabulous video! It was a great harvest anyway, I wonder how strong each is in taste and eye watering, but I don't expect an experiment on the latter 😉😅. Our climates are similar and I can't wait to try a few of those now. I have spring onions in the tunnel at the moment, and leeks but it is exceptionally mild here at the moment, probably 70 degrees today so all the doors will be open. Snow on the 3rd week in November, usually our first frost date in West Wales.

There are two types of Tropea onions: Tropea rossa lunga (a long variety) and Tropea rossa tonda (a round shaped variety). Both originate from the small town Tropea in Italy and I know some Italian chefs that only want to use Tropea oninon because of their mild and very good taste. And Rose de Keruel is one of two varieties used to produce the international well known and very high priced Rose de Roscoff in France. So Oignon de Roscoff ist not a name for a variety, but a AOC-label of the Roscoff region in the department of Finistère. Both of these varieties., Topea and Roscoff, are internationally very well known for their excellent and mild taste. So for me it would be important to include this parameter into the evaluation. Thank your for your great work and all the very interesting and very informative videos!

Keep up the great work 👍

Thanks for an interesting and informative video.

Thank you, great video! I'm going to try growing from seed next year too. :-) I'm really amazed by your onion yields BTW! We are lucky if we reach 1kg per square meter...

Super useful info! Thank you so much!

I'll be interested to see a follow up about taste and storage longevity. Also how your winter crop does.

Maybe have potato salad twice a week over the winter and add a quarter of each onion type, very finely chopped, to each salad. It's a fairly painless was to taste lots of raw onion varieties. - - No doubt you will live to be an ultrra runner into your ninties - taking hills in a single bound, with all that onion vim! Thanks for the intelligence and neutrality you bring.

I find these variety trials hugely impressive, but one thing that I often think is missing is an assessment of the flavour. For example, I have heard that the Globo variety may produce large and attractive looking bulbs, but the taste leaves much to be desired. I appreciate that taste is subjective, so I wonder if there is some way you can work this into your trials, perhaps giving samples of each variety to a panel of people in a blind taste assessment. Just a thought, keep up your great work on this topic

Thanks for the great video! I also grow onions, but, unfortunately, very few good seeds are sold, and there is a lot of confusion in the varieties. Several varieties have not risen at all this year. Therefore, I try to grow my onions with seeds from bulbs bought in the store. In some years, slugs really spoil the harvest, unfortunately, you just have to wait for next summer.

Good job!

Interesting results from seed, thanks for sharing. I've always grown from sets in Spring too, but this year I planted some last month for overwintering too, I'm tempted to try producing my own sets next year, but considering your results from seed I wonder if it's worth the effort instead of letting the seeds go all the way.

I typically grow 3 varieties, one red, one yellow, one white. This year, I tried a few more to see what does better in our area (New England, across the pond from you). Our climate is much less wet, most years. This year, an exceptionally dry drought for june/july, and into 1st week of august. All of my soil was the same mix of 1/3 my compost, 1/3 peat, 1/3 new bagged garden soil. I started seeds in February inside, over seeding and transplanted end of April. The Utah Yellow did really well, in terms of yield and average size. Ruby Red (long day red onion) did MUCH better than the Red Burgundy variety. Bigger overall yield, bigger avg onions. Pompeii White ended up outproducing the White Sweet Spanish overall yield, even with the Pompeii giving me MUCH smaller avg size. I will definitely sow Red Ruby, Pompeii White and Utah Yellow. In addition, I grew Red Beard Bunching, Tokyo Long white Bunching Onion. BOTH will get resown come February. I grow both of these for dehydrating and storing. I typically overseed, and also over plant early, and then as my growing season comes along, I harvest the smallest, in between the onions growing, for using fresh. I harvested for final season, sometime in late Oct.

I bet they would make a great grilled cheese and onion sandwich , even most so with the local sour dough bread in your area.

Best taste test idea I can come up with for onions is to pickle them all separately.

Perhaps the red onions are more susceptible to watering variations, similar to how tomatoes will burst in boom/bust cycles of water?

You will have a strong immune system with all that onion

In my past I have planted many sets and always had more than i wanted go to seed, switched over to plants (seeds), and now have less than 1% that go to seed. Only var that I have grown that you listed is ailsa craig, I have found it to be very poor in storage, but a good tasteing one. I think in all onions there is a balance in fertility that is part of the storage factor, too thick of a neck leads to poor storage overall. pushing a onion past its best size makes the storage worse.

I've grown ailsa craig several times and it generally performs well, it's not great for storage though.

Hi bruce! got the patreon working now, doing my bit! This is incredible work especially when im also irish, no other place can i find such good research and entertainment! just wondering where you source your seeds, ive been looking online but its hard to find many at the same supplier. Cant wait to try these varieties next year, many thanks 🙏 especially for the tomatoes, you have some great varieties! ❤

There is a buzz about bunching onions in the house-stead community as they reproduce on their own. These varieties need to over winter in the ground.Harvesting and resowing techniques may vary with each type . The french shallot is one of them and by the look of some of the inside of what you cut open it would seem that the Cipolle di Tropea maybe one of them as it wants to divide. Taste testing onions sound rough. I know my stomach wouldn't be able to handle it. Some varieties are OK raw as they are mild and sweet , such as the red or white skin ones.

It sounds like you need some recipes to test all those onion varieties.

Amazing video. Would love to have the fertility schedule and information.

Tempted to volunteer for the taste test…

I'm interested in the strength of flavour, and longest storing. I've kept seed sown shallots (Matador) for over 15 months, and they were the size of a small /medium onions

Eat those raw onions! Do it for science!!🧅

👍😊👌

In your last onion vid what size plastic grow bag did you use please

But how do they taste?!

After watching your video could I get some advice on what might be the best Long Day Red Onion to try and grow next year

have grown some onion too this year, they got flower, but i have not seen seeds ...... am i blind or they just tricked me with a lab variety ?

Taste test ? ;)

Please don't eat raw onions. At least cook them first.

Great Trial😊