Those deliciously sweet Vidalia onions that show up in the stores and produce stands each spring are even sweeter and more delicious when you grow them yourself in north Florida. And few vegetables are as easy to grow as onions!

Time is running out to plant onions, but if you get yours in the ground in the next week or two, you’ll be harvesting large, full size onions come early May.

You will probably need to order your onion transplants or sets from a dealer on the Web because they may be hard to find around town. From my experience, onion transplants are widely sold locally in January (go figure!), which is too late for getting the best yields. So, if you can't find any locally now, use my custom Front-Yard Farmer search engine on this page to find onion sets.

In north Florida, we grow short-day varieties of onions such as Excel, Texas Grano, Granex, White Granex and Tropicana Red. Granex is the variety that is used for producing the popular Vidalia onions and St. Augustine Sweets. Texas Grano is an extra large, straw colored onion. Excel is a yellow onion and Tropicana Red is a red/purple onion.

Plant the transplants four to five inches apart in rows that are spaced 12 to 24 inches apart, fertilize, water and weed as necessary. It’s really that easy. A general rule of thumb is to plant 3 to 5 row feet of sweet onions for each person (sweet onions don’t store very long), or 10-15 row feet of long-keeping storage onions per person.