Vegetable · Amaryllidaceae
When to plant spring onions
Ready in eight weeks, sown in a dense band rather than spaced out, and the easiest allium to fit into gaps in the bed.
Sow direct
4 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
55-75
From sowing to a first picking.
Frost tolerance
Hardy
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make spring onions plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 4 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 55–75 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Sow again every 21 days for a continuous supply.
- Can also be sown in late summer for an autumn crop or to overwinter.
Getting the timing right
Sow direct every three weeks from four weeks before the last frost until about ten weeks before the first. An autumn sowing overwinters for a very early spring crop.
Frost tolerance
Tolerates about -8C. Autumn sowings survive most temperate winters and stand through cold weather without bolting.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -8°C (17.6°F)17.6°F (-8°C).