oooooooooooooh I would be so mad...and sad...sorry to hear this, I hope some of them make it!!!

Onions are very tough, have you seen how they ship them in little half dried out bundles all over the country to be left in bins where they are handled frequently and exposed to sun and wind? And then you buy a bunch, stick in the ground, and they start growing. I bet a good portion of yours will make it. :)

... And now we know how onions made it to Oz.

Thanks for the reassurance folks! I'm like sunnibel7, I was at my local farm & home the other day & their transplants were simply horrible looking! Those places get their shipments weeks before they can be planted out & yet the transplants seem to thrive.......

Yuuuuup! Dorothy & Toto must have brought onions with them!

The wind this year is so bad. I spend a lot of time collecting my plant cover blown by the wind and cover the plants againI hate it especially some of my plants suffer from spending the night without cover. Mother nature is strange.

I have wind issues, too, and had a rack like yours topple a few years ago. Now I only enclose the bottom three shelves with plastic in strong wind, which is like every day.

After more flyaways than I want to recall, I learned that diagonal lash lines tightened over tunnels will keep them in place. I use clothesline rope, and anchor the lash lines to boards. Finally, wind-resistant tunnels. I know better than to say wind proof.

The plants are tough little buggers and I'm sick of the KS wind every time I have to go out in it on what would otherwise be a beautiful day........but.......onward we trudge :) I've tried onions from seed in the ground, plug trays, plants and this year mass planted in 6" pots started a week ago. The potted plants will be separated at planting and stuck in the ground. Being the potted en masse method is a my first try I have high hopes but will no doubt find some problems. If the tops get too tall I plan to mow them back, if the roots get too intertwined they may suffer transplant shock to a greater degree.

Hang in there, the next weather system moves in for us about next Thurs., yes, another one!

I would be a bit surprised if almost all of your onions don't survive.

We get our fair share of big winds here on the high plains of Colorado at this time of year. Yesterday I was trying to work with row covers in the wind. Lots of frustration but it got done.

Last year I had the most beautiful row of Candy onions. All of a sudden, I noticed the tops didn't look right, they were getting mushy. The whole row rotted. What did I do wrong?I've been growing onions for years and never had this happen before.

It sounds like bacterial soft rot, mostly because it ran so fast. Did you have a violent storm a couple of weeks before? The bacteria could have invaded the tissues then and taken off unnoticed.

In my experience, it takes a hail storm or similar violent weather, which wounds the onion tissues, to trigger a disease outbreak. Probably not your fault.

It hailed here 3 times last year, but I can't remember just when.Also I do remember digging some compost into that row. Could that have done it?

It sounds like an act of nature to me. Last year a hail storm hit in late May, when my garlic and onions were lush with tender greens. Two weeks later we had a 60 mph wind event, and I saw foliar diseases on my onions and garlic, regardless of species or variety, for the rest of the season. This never happens without hail or wind damage, because the pathogens can't get into the leaves.

Compost is good, and by the time it's finished, bacterial populations have given way to fungi. It's windblown rain and soil in open wounds that cause problems for onions, in my experience.

We get the lovely wind in Southeast Kansas too; trying to harden off tomatoes and peppers (or whatever) can be a huge pain when these gusts come along that just snap the stems.

I try to put them against a windbreak but the gusts seem to come from all different directions including from straight up. I have to put a rock on the seedling trays just to keep them from sliding all over the place.

The wind even occasionally snaps garlic 'leaves'.

You guys are scaring me.

Oh, no! You certainly have my sympathies. We're not close to planting yet (still feet of snow on the ground), but last season was terrible here for high winds. I had to tie down the cold frames in the spring and the summer brought hail, nasty winds and full-out tornadoes. My in-laws lost their cattle shelter and grain bins were twisted and scattered all over the countryside. Our garden is protected on most sides, but anything coming from the southwest creams it, which is of course where most of the high winds came from last year. Everything was affected, but the greatest loss was nearly half of all my poor brassicas snapped right off. We were regularly following one of those tornado chaser live feeds last year and that was the storm that had two of them (one from Canada and one from the States) headed straight for us (not good). It passed a few miles from our place, thankfully. But yeah, I totally sympathise with your wind troubles lately. Hope your seedlings survive and do well for you! Onions are tough. :)