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+--- Thread: Old allium seeds (/showthread.php?tid=1295)
Old allium seeds - Veggie - 02-10-2021
According to Real Seeds, onions, leeks, spring onions have a seed life of 3 years max. With this in mind, I've been going through all my allium seeds and pulling out all that have a sow by date of 2020/21 to sow now in my usual random way.
It is actually the right time of year to sow Chives & Garlic Chives, Winter Hardy White Lisbon Spring onions, Evergreen Bunching onions, Feast Spring onions, North Holland Blood Red Redmate onions for salad or bulb and Senshyu yellow onions - so I'll start with these.
Since I'm hopeless at growing bulb onions from seed, I'm going to treat them all as "spring onions" and mix together all the seeds - sow a few in a seed tray and the rest will be scattered outdoors, probably in a square block so that I don't confuse them with grass.
In January, I'll do the same with the old leek seeds and a few more onions and in March I'll scatter the remainder.
By then, I should have some idea about what has germinated and may be usable and, if very little, the leeks etc can be sown in the same square.
I'd like to grow enough alliums that I can pull one up whenever I want a bit of onion flavour - I don't need big, eyewatering onions.
RE: Old allium seeds - SarrissUK - 03-10-2021
I could do that too - I have packets and packets of big onion seeds but I rarely find the need to sow them. I do love spring onions though, so I will take a leaf out of your book Veggie and do the same as soon as I get a bed going
RE: Old allium seeds - Spec - 17-12-2021
I think I will give that a try tomorrow even though there is a couple of months behind the time that you said is the best time, the only way I will know if it will work or not is to try it