Grow Pickling Onions [Container Gardening ]

🌱 Growing Pickling Onions: A Crisp and Zesty Journey
Pickling onions, known for their small size and bold flavour, are a delightful crop to grow—perfect for homemade chutneys and tangy pickles. Here’s a rundown of what it takes to cultivate these zesty little gems in your garden:

🌿 Choosing the Right Variety
Look for varieties specifically bred for pickling, such as ‘Paris Silver Skin’, ‘Hyskin’, or ‘Barletta’.

These types develop into small, uniform bulbs ideal for brining.

🌞 Planting Time & Conditions
Sow seeds indoors from late winter to early spring, or directly outdoors from mid-spring, once frost risk has passed.

Pick a sunny, well-drained spot with loose, fertile soil enriched with compost or well-rotted manure.

🌱 Growing Tips
Spacing: Thin seedlings to allow 5–10 cm between each for good air circulation and even growth.

Watering: Keep soil consistently moist but not waterlogged—especially during dry spells.

Weeding: Regularly remove weeds that compete for nutrients and space.

🧅 Harvesting & Prep for Pickling
Harvest when bulbs are about 1–2 inches in diameter, usually in mid to late summer.

Dry them in a cool, ventilated space for a few days before peeling and pickling.

Smaller bulbs tend to absorb pickling spices better, creating a more intense flavour.

🍾 Bonus Tip
To make peeling easier, blanch onions briefly in boiling water, then plunge into cold water before skinning
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Definitely not what I were expecting. Coming up to the end of July, a week of rain and thunderstorms. One advantage is we’ve not had to do much watering just lately, but we would like a little bit of that sunbag. I’m looking at the onions that we’ve got growing today. We’ve got a few different types as well, but I’m looking at one in particular, and I’ll explain why very shortly, but for the moment, I want to check what progresses onions are making because normally you would harvest onions sometime in August. So, it’s not too far away at all. So, let’s have a quick look and see how everything’s getting on. And then I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with these other type of onions. While I’m here, I might as well take this one. It’s a good size. That’s another onion to pop in fridge. Next to it, we’ve got one that’s a little bit smaller, but it’s still perfectly usable. And that is that tray done. So, I might plant some more onions in there to harvest later in year. You can also see that this container of onions is getting ready to harvest as well. Everything’s fell over and all those skins are now going brown. I’m just checking on these red onions again. They were quite small a couple of weeks ago, but look at that. That’s a really good size red onion. So, I think we’re going to be in luck this season cuz everything is starting to bulbble. Usually when we grow these from sets, they just don’t work out. And behind them, we’ve got these whites. There’s quite a few all together there. And I’m not bothered about this size as long as we get something. But we still have got a few goodiz ones in there. It’s also time to get rid of a few more of these tomatoes. Everything seems to start to ripen all at the same time. So, we’ll just keep picking them. And if we get too many, we’ll just give a few away. This is the other red onions. You can see they’re doing okay as well. So, I’m quite pleased with the results of these red onions this year, considering we’re growing from seed. I’m back to that cucumber plant. We took three cucumbers off this only a week ago. And these are miniature cucumbers, but you can see now we’ve caught another three really goodiz ones to go at. And these plants just keep producing and producing until the first frost. And there you go. There’s some more on way already. So, we’ll need to pick those. and encourage this plant to put out fresh growth. And if we see leaves like this, what we’ll do is we’ll start cutting these off. And I’ve just noticed it’s growing down the side. So, we’ll pick that up, try and get it to grab hold somewhere. Looks like we’ve got some strawberries as well. Not quite ready yet, but there will be soon enough. So, mid July. The weather is a little bit strange, I think, for this time of year, but everything seems to be coping perfectly well as cabbages are getting to the point now where they’re arting up. So, I don’t think these are going to be long before we can take one. But, it’s these ones that I’m looking at today more than anything. They’ve grown really big. And believe it or not, these are spring onions, but I’ve let them grow on so I can use them as pickling onions. Some of these onions are a bit bigger than I wanted, but we can soon sort that out by taking off a few layers. But look at the size of the stems. Coming around this side, you can see where we multi-sewn these white Lisbon spring onions. So, all we need to do is take away that entire bunch. And we’ve got a fair few in that area. And the same here. And most of these are the perfect size for pickling. So, we’re definitely going to get a good size jar pickled onions out of this. So, all we need to do is pull them out. They can be a little stubborn as well. But you can see there, it’s a perfect size onion for pickling. And we’ll just take away that outer skin. And it’s a really nice clean one. So that’s the start. You can pull them all out at once if you want, but I’m trying not to damage any. Once again, not a bad size. And take that layer off from outside. And again, a nice clean onion. So, this is an option that you can do if you don’t want the small spring onions and you’d like to make some really tasty pickled onions. Just take that root away. We’ll give those a clean anyway and maybe remove another layer. What better job to do on a Monday morning while it’s raining? So, that was just one of these pockets from this green store planter. We’ve got quite a few onions already. As I said, the sizes vary, but that don’t really matter. Can make up whatever size we want while removing layers. So, we’ll carry on and we’ll get all rest out. And we have actually got a video showing you how to pickle onions. So, just 10 minutes or so, we took all those onions out and that is what we’ve come out with. There’s enough overgrown spring onions there to make up a really nice jar of sweet pickled onions. So, I think that was definitely worth waiting for. So, we’ll get those tuck indoors. We’ll chop all those tops off and then we can start that pickling process. And since it’s quite early in here, can sew them more. And if you want to grow spring onions for the small spring onions, then I would sew more every two weeks. and you’ll constantly have supply of those all the way through season or you could do an extra batch. Let them grow on like that and make yourself some homemade pickled onions. Anyway, I can’t wait till August and we start pulling the rest of these onions. Hopefully those reds will have got a little bit bigger by then, but we’ve definitely got plenty of the other onions. So, we’ll dry those out and then we’ll store for a long time. If you want to see what else we’re going to be doing as we approach the end of July, then please hit that subscribe button, press that notifications bell, and I’ll see you next time. Take care.