Still confused about my onions... AND leeks

This is my first year growing onion starts. Should I pick them when they start popping out of the ground, or do I leave them there so the roots make them larger???? I thought maybe I should pick them when they break ground, but some were disapointingly little when I did that, which made me think I did something wrong.

This is also my first year growing leek starts. How do you know when to pull up leeks? Do I just wait until early September in zone 5 to give them their days? They are Lancelots. Is there a way to look at leeks and know it is okay to dig them up?

Thanks for your help!!!

Oh, boy! I need to know the answer to the leek question, too.

As far as the onions, from what I understand, they grow above ground, so you just leave them until they are the size you want, or until they stop growing. (It will be interesting to see if i remember correctly from what I've read!)

I am soooo loving the home grown onions and shallots. i had no idea they wouldbe so much fun to grow.

I leave my leeks in the ground even through winter, until I need to use some. Certain varieties over-winter better than others, and of course hilling dirt up around them as they grow gives you more white part. I start mine in a trench about 6-8" deep and fill in an inch or so at a time as they grow.

While you can use onions at any stage of growth I harvest them in the fall when the stems fall over and dry up. I then pull the onions and let them dry, cut off the stems and store them in a 5 gallon bucket in the cellar to enjoy all winter.
Last year I planted leek for the first time in many years and was able to harvest large bulbs in October. The leek isn't growing as well this year so I may see how it winters over if it isn't large by the end of September and October.

Okay gardadore, thanks, I will use the 5 gal and store mine in the basement that way too. One question... do the leeks still taste good if I overwinter them? Cus if they don't look any better this October, then I'll plan to overwinter mine too.

Thanks again for the answers folks. ;)

The leeks should taste fine after overwintering. I'll leave this up to others with more leek experience.
Perhaps more mulching would help them do better over the winter. That's what I will do - just add more straw to them. I always have onions and garlic in the garden and the winters don't seem to do them any harm.

Good idea on the mulch and how interesting on your onions and garlic overwintering. :) I learn so much here.

You can eat leeks whenever you want. I, too, plant them in a trench. I dig it about 10 inches deep, then fill it up with 2 inches of compost. I plant the seed in the bottom of the trench or I start the seed in little pots and plant the starts in the bottom of the trench. Then as they grow I add more and more compost. This blanches the bottom part of the leek. I have recipes for baby leeks and for big leeks. They are rather like onions, they can be eaten at any time.
I don't plant onion sets. I plant onions grown from seed, by me, or more commonly, by Dixondale farms, which grows many kinds of onions for various latitudes. I find the seed grown onions milder than set grown onions, but maybe there are some that I don't know about that aren't so hot. I also pick onions any time I feel like it, as young green onions, as small spring onions and finally as full grown onions. I store the ones that I don't finish in the summer and fall, if there are any. The trick is to plant enough onions and close enough together that you can go down the row picking every other onion eating the young ones and leaving the others to mature into large onions.
I love onions and grow more of them than I do of tomatoes, which I also love. I put onions in so many dishes and lately I have heard they help prevent cancer! Wow! What a good deal.

I overdid my last planting of scallions last fall, and they overwintered with a vengeance. At first, I was glad to have them, but they started to get so big, they might as well be leeks. So I said, fine, let's pretend they're leeks. Scallion and potato soup, baked creamed scallions. Not so bad.

Hey, you could do worse. Scallions are delicious. Maybe next time you can plant some scallions and some bulbing onions. Eat scallions early, bulbing onions late. I am not sure why scallions are different from leeks. I haven't grown scallions, just bulbing and leeks. I have always intended to try them though. I have also grown pearl onions. They get larger than is considered normal at my intermediate altitude. I think they do better ant more northern latitudes -- like yours. I think you can grow long day onions.

Thank you very much for the input everyone. This is my first year with both and when I EVER SAW my first onion come up out of the ground, I thought onions and leeks (Yep, I used Dixondale for starts) for sure I had to bury it. I was even more shocked to discover they keep growing above ground with their roots below!!! But what really blew me away is that they can all stay in ground over the winter.... WOW! What an excellent veggie to grow that can be used all year round!!!! Okay, I'm greedy, but I hope I learn even more stuff about onions and leeks in here lol!!!

Here's a great recipe that works with baby leeks and scallions. They have to be young or small enough to be tender.
Clean and remove the outer tougher stalks. Place in a baking pan (I use the bottom of a small broiler pan), brush with olive oil, add crushed fresh garlic to taste, sprinkle with salt and other seasonings of choice to taste, bake in about 325 -350 degree oven until soft and tender (about 10 -15 min depending on your oven). Watch them so they don't burn. Fantastic with steak!

I think I gave the wrong impression on overwintering onions. In my climate it is usually by accident. If you overwinter them then the next year they will go to seed, which may be an option for you. But I try to harvest all my onions in the fall. I just miss some hidden ones and they return the next year. I would think in MA you would do better to harvest them this year and replant next year. I always start mine from sets, not seeds. It may be different when starting from seed with the overwintering. I have no experience with seeds.
Also I always thought scallions were just young onions before they matured, so if you plant an onion you will have scallions until they get too big. So is there actually a variety that gives scallions over other types of onions?

They are different types, yes.

Varieties like Evergreen Long White Bunching won't grow bulbs, they will just grow thicker and thicker stalks, looking rather like leeks. Eventually they will go to seed and get woody, particularly the seed stalk. What surprised me this spring was that I expected them to get harsh and strong at this phase, but they didn't, which made them useable as pseudo-leeks.

Leeks, otoh, are not just oversized scallions. You can easily see the difference in their flat, fanned leaves, where bunching green scallions have the hollow leaves of onions.

I grew sweet onions this year and they were fabulous. I grew Candy hybrid and Siskiyou varieties. They both did really well. The tops fell over about the end of July and began to brown, so I didn't wait for fall. They were large sized bulbs and very nice flavour. I'm not sure if most people wait until fall but I picked them and let them dry for a couple days on the surface of the soil and then brought them in. I caramelized a bunch of them and froze them, and some are still in the fridge. Maybe the sweet onions are ready earlier than other types?

CMOX, I notice my RED onions are not popping out of ground yet but I'm not worried, because according to Dixondale, my z5 is in a LONG season onion zone. Some of my yellows are popping up, but I'm going to let them GROW into October.

I think tomorrow I will put the rest of my garlic and I will keep my eye on the onions getting bigger and scope the leeks in October.

Thanks again for the info my gardening friends!!!

I grow Candy, a day neutral onion, and get large sweet bulbs too. They are one of my favorites.
I grow red onions from Dixondale as well, but must grow day-neutral onions because of my latitude. The red onions are always the last ones to mature, so I suspect yours will mature eventually. It is kind of nice the way onions work. At least here, the white ones come on first, the yellow ones get you through the summer, and the red ones come on in the fall.
By the way, here is a trick I learned somewhere. Plant walla walla onions from seed now, end of summer. They will winter over and make early big onions in the spring. And walla walla onions can get really big!

Sounds great. Do you direct seed into the ground? (As opposed to raised bed or container?)

Both. Usually I direct seed the onions into the ground, right next to a soaker hose to water them as they grow.
Leeks, I have done both. Depends on whether I have had time to dig the trench or not.