Yellow Sweet Onion

Allium cepa 'Candy'

vegetable

Candy is an intermediate-day (day-neutral) hybrid sweet onion that forms big, slightly flattened, light-yellow globes - up to softball size - with sweet, juicy, low-sulfur flesh. Because it is day-neutral rather than long- or short-day, it bulbs well across most of the country, from the far North to the deep South, unlike region-locked sweet onions such as Vidalia (short-day) or Walla Walla (long-day). Like all sweet onions, its high sugar and water content makes it mild and pleasant raw on salads and burgers but means it does not keep long, storing only about two to three months.

✅ Plant alongside

Good neighbors that attract beneficial insects or deter pests

• Carrots — Onions mask carrots from rust fly while carrots deter onion fly
• Beets and Lettuce — Share space without competing
• Tomatoes and Peppers — Onion scent helps repel aphids
• Keep away from beans and peas — Onions inhibit their nitrogen fixation

❌ Keep away from

🛡️ Pest & disease prevention

Proactive ways to stop trouble before it starts — tap a name with an arrow for its full guide

• Onion thrips →

  Choose tolerant varieties, avoid planting beside grain or alfalfa, and keep plants well-watered and unstressed

• Onion maggot →

  Delay planting past the first spring fly flight, rotate alliums, and use row cover

• Bulb rots →

  Plant in well-drained soil and rotate so alliums do not follow alliums

🌾 Harvest & storage

Harvest when the tops yellow, weaken, and flop over, signaling the bulbs have finished sizing up, and lift them on a dry day. Cure the bulbs with tops attached in a warm, airy, shaded place for two to three weeks until the necks are dry and the skins papery; use these sweet onions first, as they keep only about two to three months compared with pungent storage types.

🥗 Nutrition & benefits

Onions are low in calories and provide vitamin C, vitamin B6, and folate, along with prebiotic fibers and the antioxidant quercetin, and the organosulfur compounds that give their pungency are linked to heart health.