Why do Great Onion Varieties Disappear?
 

A few years back I was planting an excellent red onion called Mars. Then I had trouble finding seed a couple years ago. Now it is nowhere to be found! I'm afraid that is now happening with Red Zeppelin which I replaced Mars with. Where I do find it, the companies like Johnny's will only sell you plants, and most of the other retail seed catalogs no longer offer it except a few. Is Red Zeppelin the next to go?

I don't see popular hybrid varieties of other vegetables disappear, so why does it seem to happen with onions?

i'm not sure it is just onions it seems companies always want to push new varieties because the public is looking for new things. people are never content with what they have. i'm content with things that work so i'm with you.

as to mars, i found it to be problematic. they would rot growing, curing and in storage, they really were a problem. after a few years of that and growing several other varieties that never behaved that way, i switched to red wing. it's a great red onion, far superior to mars. they seldom rot (virtually never) or sprout and keep nearly as long as copra. jss sells red wing but i looked thru their catalog today and see they dropped copra! they replaced it with patterson. i just went to the website and they list copra but not in the catalog so i guess copra will disappear from jss's catalog. anyway, "[COLOR=#000000][I]Patterson has the same firmness and and storage qualities of [URL="http://www.johnnyseeds.com/search.aspx?SearchTerm=Copra"]Copra[/URL], with larger size and higher yield potential.[/I] [/COLOR]" so why is this one in the catalog instead of copra? copra are plenty large enough (people want new, bigger, better... bs) and higher yield? i get 99-100% harvested from planting in spring so how is the yield higher other than larger and i don't need or want larger.

if it ain't broke don't fix it.

try red wing they are great and i think far better than mars. i buy red wing and copra from pinetree seeds, better prices and more reasonable quantity. i don't need almost 400 seeds of each since onion seed isn't that reliable the next year. so i get 60 or 70% of that for little more than 1/2 the price. i buy most seeds from pinetree now.

tom

tom,

I do grow Redwing for the longer storage ability, but I really like Red Zeppelin too, which is larger and more like the italian red onions I grew up with. There is one that looks similar in the Seeds of Change catalog I may have to try, and they also have Copra, Candy, and Redwing so I can make it one-stop shopping.I'll check out Pinetree too.

But, I still don't understand why popular onion varieties disappear so quickly. Red Zeppelin hasn't been around that long if I remember right.

in a word - marketing.

i really think seed companies produce new varieties to show they are not falling behind the competition selling old stale stock. like i said it makes no sense to me but the economy would collapse if it depended upon people like me to survive!

tom

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=4]I believe you’re interested in seed based on your post, but Dixondale Farms has Red Zeppelin plants. 50-75 plants for $11.00 – which includes shipping. I get my onions from them every year and have been very pleased.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=4][URL="http://www.dixondalefarms.com/product/92/17"]www.dixondalefarms.com/product/92/17[/URL][/SIZE][/FONT]

Would I be considered cynical if I said I wouldn't be surprised that the same variety reappears a few years later with a different name and advertised as the "newest super duper solver of all your problems" variety.

Stokes Seeds has Mars right now. Johnny's has Red Zeppelin.

[QUOTE=Doug9345;318653]Would I be considered cynical if I said I wouldn't be surprised that the same variety reappears a few years later with a different name and advertised as the "newest super duper solver of all your problems" variety.[/QUOTE]

Not by me...

Gourmet Seed has a very large selection of onion seeds. You might want to try some of them.

[url]http://www.gourmetseed.com/[/url]