Harvesting Onions

About the third week of July.

Around the same time as the garlic, it's about time to check on the onions.  These little purple beauties sprang up from last year, so I carefully transplanted them to a new bed to see if I'd get onions this year.  Lo and behold, they did really well, and now they were ready for harvesting.

To check onions to see if they're ready to be harvested, gently squeeze the stalk about 3-4" above the base.  If it's hollow, it can be harvested.  If it's still hard, let it stay in the ground, and check it in three or four days.

Gently pull the onion from the ground--don't worry, the roots are pretty shallow and it should come up pretty easily.  You can wiggle it a bit if you need to.  I had a few "doubles," and I gently separated them by wiggling.

Then, lay the onions on top of the soil so the roots are completely exposed.  If the roots are touching the ground, they may re-root, or so I've read.  Leave the onions on top of the soil for a few days to begin the curing process.

After a few days in the sun, I remove my onions to a dry place out of the sun to cure for two or three more weeks.  This helps them develop that papery skin on their outsides, which helps them last longer.

Below, you can see mostly garlic, but there are a few purple onions way in the back there, and since the time I took this picture, I've added the rest of my onions.  This is on my front porch, which is covered and out of the sun.  After a few weeks, I'll store the onions in a plastic shoebox in my basement Bomb Shelter, as we affectionately call it.  It's cool and dry down there, a perfect place for storing onions.

Honestly, most of the onions will be eaten within a month or two, so they won't stay stored for long.  They were all a nice size this year, at least golf ball size or so which is good for me as I'm not the best gardener in the world, lol.  Most of these onions will end up in my salads, which I eat every day for lunch.  Yummy, crunchy goodness straight from the garden--that's one of my favorite things about summer!


Back to life,
Christine

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