All the seeds that I have sown so far have been sown indoors, chillies, peppers and strawberries. The reason I have sown them mid-January is for of a couple of reasons. I am completely new to this and am not 100% sure I am going to be successful. By sowing my seeds earlier, if any problems arise in the first few weeks, it gives me time to sort them out. The other reason is that due to the lack of the sun in the UK, I understand that growth rate isn’t as quick as hotter, sunnier countries.

Once the chillies and peppers have sprouted, I plan to keep them indoors until the weather gets consistently hotter. The strawberries on the other hand, can be planted outside as early as March – April, ready to harvest in the summer. So today I am going to talk your through how to sow onion seeds indoors, just like mine… and hopefully be successful.

What you will need

To sow onion seeds indoors, you will require a few things. The first most obvious thing you will need are the seed themselves. Secondly, you need some soil to grow them in. There are a lot of different options out there of what to use. I personally used some enriched seed compost which I think is pretty good. It has everything in it to help give your seeds the best start in life. The final thing is a container to plant them in. When starting them off, individual seed cells work well or propagator containers.

How to plant them

Once you have the main bits of equipment the rest is easy. I used a propagator container so sow mine in then simply filled it with my enriched seed compost, packing it in bit by bit. I then created eight little dimples in the surface of the compost; this is where the seeds will sit. In each little dimple I roughly sowed in between 3-6 seeds in each one then afterwards sprinkled a layer of compost on top to cover the seeds. The final step is giving them a light water and making sure your compost feels moist. That’s the hard part done of how to sow your onion seeds indoors!

How to care for them

After they are sown, all you need to do now is care for them. I keep mine in my conservatory on the windowsill so they have access to plenty of light during the day, however a south facing windowsill will suffice for this. Another factor to take into consideration is that ideally, they need to stay in compost between 15 – 20 degrees Celsius to successfully germinate. I bought a heated propagator to assist me in doing this which I talk about in another post. Another tip is if you have a lid for your seed cells or propagator container, use it, as this will help keep the seeds warm and the compost moist.

The timeline

So, after sowing my seeds today, I am going to keep caring for them until they become big enough to plant into small pots. Once they are at that stage then I will be going to plant them out in my garden. I expect them to start sprouting in about 10 – 20 days. Then another 20 days growing in pots then they should be ready to plant outside and harvest around June time. So hopefully this post has helped you in some way or another or just given you an interesting read. If you have any tips and suggestions, please do leave a comment below!