If you want a decent plant you want a decent seed. If you want a decent seed you want a decent plant. Who’s got decent plants? Well, what about that Welsh guy? From the island with the druids and all that? Thirteen-time Chelsea Gold Medal Winner. You know, that geezer who continues to hoover up National and Regional veg comp prizes like they’re going put of fashion?
His name’s on the tip of our tongue. Ermm, President of the National Veg Society. Help us out! Flat-capped bloke with an MBE for services to horticulture? Fine! We’ll remember his name for ourselves. Medwyn Williams has got decent plants, you can get some seeds off him. Happy now? Well, when you find out what he’s been up to this year you might just be ecstatic.
This summer Medwyn’s given us a couple of glimpses of his seed growing operations, specifically his onion output, and his offerings for 2026 look to be very promising indeed. Join us as we learn about his techniques, timeline, and the kit he uses to produce potential champion veg of the future.
The whole process starts with the previous year’s still-planted crop of Large Exhibition Onions – a unique re-selection of Medwyn’s very own. These immense and incredibly healthy alliums are overwintered in 1Pot XL modules. If Medwyn was overwintering onions in the ground he’d likely need to dig them up, store them, and replant in early spring. By using AutoPot, he manages to avoid this rigmarole, keeping the plants stable and sated in his polytunnels.
Should you wish to cock a snoot at Medwyn’s seeds and produce seeds of your own, it’s worth mentioning here and now that the technique will only work with certain types of onion. Steer clear of hybrids, as the seeds of these often fail to germinate or emulate the parent plant.
By late spring ’25 Medwyn’s onions were throwing some trippy 90’s album cover shapes in the form of inflorescences and rapidly developing flowers. This year’s weather helped massively in stimulating thick, stalactite-like stems upon which the flowers could really thrive. And if sultry conditions had a positive effect on vegetation it was nothing to what the heat and light did for pollination and production.
Onion flowers are self-pollinating but deliver truly exceptional results when cross pollinated. For this you ideally need bees, which (by Medwyn’s reckoning) were around in huge numbers this year thanks to the warm spring and hot, extended summer. To give pollination an extra kick Medwyn also hand pollinated using a small brush. He recommends doing this early in the day when the pollen is at its very best. With the scene set, so began the waiting game.
Throughout development in this, their second summer, the plants could be left to their own devices, fed and watered automatically by the XL modules. Like all AutoPot Watering Systems, the 25L / 6.6 gal XL modules supply irrigation only in response to plant uptake. Such responsiveness is really handy when you’re dealing with the vicissitudes of plants during seed production. Sure, the plants are big and the flowers need supporting, but the crop itself is over, so it’s not a typical watering profile.
Ten weeks later and anyone visiting the polys would be forgiven for thinking the flowers had been very naughty indeed. That, or they had developed into some obscene features. Neither notion could be further from the truth. Despite having been hooded with brown paper bags the flowers were, in fact, exhibiting some positively pleasant development, as Medwyn would soon reveal.
Upon ‘debagging’, each drying flower head was bejewelled with a bonanza of black seeds ready for harvesting. The brown bags were merely Medwyn’s way of containing the seeds lest nature take it’s course and they start falling to the ground – an elegant yet simple solution. Next up – trimming!
In order to get the seeds out, Medwyn cut the stalks free of each head and discarded the bigger bits of dead plant matter. The still-seeded stalks were then smuggled into his wife’s airing cupboard for a further drying phase – if your onions come up smelling of clean laundry you’ll know why! Jokes aside, it was an excellent way to remove excess moisture before Medwyn rubbed the desiccated, disintegrating stalks away by hand to release the seeds (not in the airing cupboard we hope).
For the final clean-up Medwyn reached for his deep jug. Therein he floated the seeds in water which caused the last remnants of the flower head to separate, with the debris on the surface and the clean seeds sinking below. A quick skim-and-sieve separated the end product from the waste and the seeds were left to dry out ready for sale.
Interested in trying some of these lovingly prepared, pedigree-proven seeds? We strongly recommend that you get yourselves over to Medwyn’s seed shop right now – they are likely to fly, not least because (thanks in part to the bumper seed crop) Medwyn has dropped prices considerably – who says there’s no love in the game anymore?!
For more insights into Medwyn’s ways and the latest on new releases follow Medwyn on X and on Insta.
