GardenOnion variety
Yosemite Onion
✓ In your garden
Yosemite is a yellow intermediate day onion, ready in about 85–120 days. It’s an intermediate-day onion — best in the middle band of the country. Day length is the make-or-break for onions — pick the wrong type for your latitude and the bulbs stay small. Start from seed or sets in early spring.
“A bulb onion — match the type to your latitude.”
Growing basics — shared by every onion
Yosemite grows like any other onion. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Onion page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 3–4 in
- Row spacing
- 12–18 in
- Planting depth
- 1–1.5 in
- Soil pH
- 6–7
- Water
- Moderate
What is Yosemite good for?
- CookingSautéed, roasted, raw. Great
- StoringPungent storage types cure and keep for months; sweet types (Walla Walla, Vidalia, 1015Y) don’t — eat those within weeks. Skip it
- Fresh & rawMilder and sweet types shine raw. Great
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
What Yosemite is known for
Urban Farmer Seeds describes this as:
- keeps a long time after picking
That is the company selling the seed, describing its own product. True, and worth weighing as such.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Yosemite in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around mid May, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Start seeds indoors
- mid Feb – mid Feb
- Picking
- mid May – early Jul
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
What to plant near Yosemite — and what to keep away
-
CarrotsTrialed
Interplanted onions confused carrot rust fly in some trials and did nothing in others. Worth a try, not a bet.
-
BeetsTraditional
Chart canon, both directions.
-
Cabbage familyTraditional
Old chart pairing; both hold cool-season beds.
-
LettuceTraditional
On the classic charts — lettuce's own row lists onions.
-
TomatoTraditional
Chart canon says onions and garlic make good tomato neighbors. No trials to point at, no conflict either.
-
BeansTraditional
The most consistent 'no' in companion planting. Unproven, unanimous.
-
PeasTraditional
Same flag as beans — every chart agrees.
The badge is the honesty. Trialed = a published field trial · Practical = a real mechanism · Traditional = companion-chart lore. These pairings hold for every onion.
Pairings compiled from University of Minnesota Extension, West Virginia University Extension.
Growing Yosemite — the things that trip people up
- Match the type to your latitude: long-day onions for the North, short-day for the South, intermediate in between — this is the single biggest factor in whether you get big bulbs.
- Onions are shallow-rooted and weak against weeds. Keep them weeded and evenly watered, ease off water as the tops fall over, then cure the bulbs in a dry, airy spot before storing.
Yosemite onion at a glance
| Type | Intermediate Day |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 85–120 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Yellow |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Common questions about Yosemite
How long does Yosemite take to grow?
About 85–120 days from sowing. Start seed or sets in early spring for summer bulbs.
Will Yosemite bulb where I live?
It’s a intermediate day onion, so it bulbs best in the middle latitudes. Match the day-length type to your latitude for full-size bulbs.
Browse more onion varieties →