Identification of Onion Cultivars Suited to Saskatchewan Production Conditions and Market Requirements (2021-2022) 1 page
Trials to assess the performance of onion cultivars potentially suited to Saskatchewan growing conditions were conducted in 2021 at the CSIDC Field Station in Outlook SK and in 2022 at Spring Creek Gardens, a commercial vegetable farm located near Outlook. Both test sites feature an irrigated sandy loam soil which is well suited to onion production. In both years, promising cultivars of yellow, red, white and Spanish type onions were established by direct seeding. Some of the longer season cultivars were also established using greenhouse grown transplants. In both years, the direct seeded onions were very slow to emerge and weed pressure was too intense to be controlled with the available herbicides or by tillage. Consequently, in both years the direct seeded trials were terminated early as the plant stand was too poor and the field too overrun with weeds to generate any useful performance or yield data. In the 2021 trial, the transplanted onions began to die off within a week of being put into the field and within 6 weeks less than 5% of the plants were still surviving. Wireworms were the likely cause of this problem. In the transplanted onion trial in 2022 adequate weed control was achieved using herbicides supplemented with hand weeding and no wireworm issues were observed. Yields and quality of all the transplanted onion cultivars tested in 2022 were exceptionally good.
