The fastest way to sort out types of onions is by day length, not color or flavor. Onions form bulbs based on how many hours of daylight they get, and planting the wrong day-length type for your latitude is the single most common reason gardeners end up with onions the size of golf balls. Get that one thing right and almost everything else on this list is just a matter of taste.<\/p>\n
Most people grab the biggest, prettiest bulb at the garden center, usually a sweet Spanish type, without checking whether it even bulbs properly where they live. Experienced growers quietly favor a scruffier, harder-to-love category instead, one that stores all winter and never asks for babying. Number 13 on this list is the one gardeners misjudge almost every time, usually for the opposite reason you’d expect.<\/p>\n
Stick around for that one, plus the storage onion most worth growing and a straightforward method for choosing the right onion for your garden, all waiting at the bottom once you’ve scrolled past every category.<\/p>\n
These bulb up when daylight hits 10 to 12 hours, which happens early in the season in southern latitudes.<\/p>\n
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The onion behind the “sweet onion” reputation<\/strong>Yellow Granex is what most Vidalia-style onions actually are. It’s mild, high in water content, flattens slightly at the top, and grows best in the Deep South, zones 7 and warmer, where it matures fast in mild winters. It does not store well, plan to eat these within a couple months of harvest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A small, intensely flavored red onion<\/strong> bred for hot southern climates, Red Creole is pungent rather than sweet, with tight layers and decent keeping ability for a short-day type. Gardeners in Texas, Florida, and the Gulf Coast lean on this one when they want a red onion that actually finishes bulbing before summer heat shuts growth down.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Flat, papery-white, and mild<\/strong>White Bermuda is an old short-day standard for slicing and sandwiches. It’s soft-fleshed and bruises easily, so it’s a fresh-eating onion, not a keeper, and it wants sandy, well-drained soil to size up properly.<\/p>\n Short-day types get you an early harvest, but plant them too far north and they’ll bulb small no matter what you do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These need 14 to 16 hours of summer daylight to trigger bulbing, which makes them the right call for northern gardens.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The big, globe-shaped yellow onion<\/strong> most people picture when they hear “onion,” Yellow Sweet Spanish grows large, mild, and juicy in northern summers with long daylight hours. It stores moderately, a few months in a cool, dry spot, but it’s not built for a full winter in the pantry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A sweet onion so mild it’s often eaten raw like an apple<\/strong>Walla Walla needs the long, cool summer days of the Pacific Northwest or a similar northern climate to reach its full size and sweetness. It’s genuinely one of the worst storage onions on this list, use it within weeks of curing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The onion serious storage growers reach for first<\/strong>Copra is a smaller, pungent yellow onion that isn’t much to look at but will keep in a cool, dark spot for eight months or longer. It’s the underrated pick experienced gardeners plant instead of the showier sweet types, because a pantry full of onions in March beats a fridge full of mush.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A long-day yellow onion bred specifically for storage<\/strong>Patterson has thick, tight skins and a firmer bulb than Copra, with similarly excellent keeping qualities. It’s a common choice for gardeners who want storage performance without sacrificing much size.<\/p>\n Long-day onions reward northern gardeners with big bulbs, but the real payoff is in how long they’ll sit in storage without going soft.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These bulb reliably across a wide band of latitudes, roughly zones 5 through 7, making them the safest bet if you’re not sure which category fits your garden.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A day-neutral hybrid that bulbs almost anywhere<\/strong>Candy is sweet, large, and forgiving of latitude in a way most onions aren’t. It’s a good first onion to grow if you’re unsure whether your garden leans short-day or long-day territory.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A white, mild, very large day-neutral onion<\/strong>Superstar can grow past a pound under good conditions and is sweet enough to eat raw. It’s soft and doesn’t store long, so treat it as a fresh-season onion rather than a winter keeper.<\/p>\n Day-neutral types split the difference on latitude, but they still split the difference on storage life too, rarely excelling at either extreme.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These are grown for the stalk, not the bulb, and they behave differently in the garden than bulbing types.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A true bunching onion that never forms a real bulb<\/strong>Evergreen White Bunching is hardy, cold-tolerant, and can often overwinter in the ground in zones 5 and warmer for an early spring harvest. It’s the standard scallion of home gardens, fast from seed and ready to cut in 60 to 65 days.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The scallion with actual red-purple coloring<\/strong> in the stalk, Red Beard adds visual contrast to the same fast, no-fuss bunching habit as its white cousin. It’s grown the same way, tight rows, harvested young, and it doesn’t need the long curing that bulb onions do.<\/p>\n Bunching onions solve the “I just want scallions” problem without any of the day-length math bulb onions demand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is where onions stop behaving like onions, and where the most misunderstood entry on the whole list shows up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A perennial that grows bulblets at the top of the stalk<\/strong> instead of just below ground, the Egyptian walking onion literally topples over and replants itself where the top-set bulblets touch soil. It’s extremely hardy, often surviving down to zone 3, and once established it comes back every year with almost no care, though the bulbs themselves stay small and sharp-flavored.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The one gardeners consistently underrate, but not for the reason you’d think<\/strong>a shallot isn’t a fancy small onion, it’s genuinely its own thing, multiplying underground into a cluster of several bulbs from one planted set, the way garlic does. People assume shallots are just delicate and gourmet; the truth is they’re one of the easiest, most productive alliums you can plant, forgiving of mediocre soil and reliably doubling or tripling your seed stock every season. The flavor is milder and more complex than onion, and they store beautifully, often six months or more.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A perennial bulb onion that splits into a cluster<\/strong> like a shallot but grows larger individual bulbs, the potato onion was a homestead staple before hybrid seed onions took over. It’s excellent for zones 4 through 8, stores exceptionally well, and lets you replant a piece of your own harvest every year instead of buying sets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A flat, disc-shaped onion grown for roasting whole<\/strong>cipollini types are usually day-neutral or short-day, sweet, and small enough to caramelize evenly without cutting. They don’t store as long as a Copra or a potato onion, but for a gardener who roasts a lot of vegetables, the shape alone makes them worth a row.<\/p>\n That covers all fifteen, and now the part that actually tells you which one to plant.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pick based on daylight and storage needs first, flavor second, and you’ll rarely end up disappointed at harvest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The fastest way to sort out types of onions is by day length, not color or flavor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"lfe_reviewer":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51,9,130],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-roundups","tag-onions","tag-roundups","tag-types-of-onions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifehacksmag.com\/garden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Red Creole<\/h3>\n
3. White Bermuda<\/h3>\n
Long-Day Onions (Best North of Zone 6)<\/h2>\n
4. Yellow Sweet Spanish<\/h3>\n
5. Walla Walla<\/h3>\n
6. Copra<\/h3>\n
7. Patterson<\/h3>\n
Day-Neutral (Intermediate) Onions<\/h2>\n
8. Candy<\/h3>\n
9. Superstar<\/h3>\n
Bunching and Green Onions<\/h2>\n
10. Evergreen White Bunching<\/h3>\n
11. Red Beard Bunching<\/h3>\n
Specialty and Perennial Onions<\/h2>\n
12. Egyptian Walking Onion<\/h3>\n
13. Shallot<\/h3>\n
14. Potato Onion (Multiplier Onion)<\/h3>\n
15. Cipollini<\/h3>\n
How to Choose the Right One<\/h2>\n
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