Its the rain again. I always plant mine in October. If this
happens I harvest them, peel and chop the stems, all the green is nice in cooking, put into a poly bag in the freezer.
Dig plenty of compost and horticultural sand into your
soil to improve the drainage for next year.

Martin where do you live in the UK SE of England or North of Scotland this makes huge difference as to when you plant onion sets. We never plant our until March time. Right now the ground is so sodden that surface water is standing on most of the surrounding fields.

Hi - I am in bournemouth south coast. It's not all of them that are like it so I'm hoping to salvage a few but planted 100 so will be rather annoyed if they all fail!! Didn't even consider using sand like I do with my carrots. I have put some mulch over them now in the hope that it shelters them and blocks a bit of moisture out but at the same time it's blocking the tips from sunlight so have probably made the problem worse!! Would I be able to move them into better draining soil? I moved some garlic last year and that still grew very well....

Sorry not much chance if the ground is water logged

I presume you bought Japanese Over Winter Onion Sets
Martin. There is a difference.
I used to plant my maincrop Onions in trays of compost in
March. Will do that again this year. They grow well if the roots are started early, give them 6 weeks
then transplant to the open ground end of April on a rainy day.

Yes I did Diane, and I showed the same picture to my tutor for my horticultural course I'm doing, and he seemed to think they will be fine, so I will just have to wait and see!