Harvesting Onions

[mew]

My onions are ready for harvesting and are drying out in the sun weve been finally blessed with... hooray. just wondered how long you normally let them dry out for before harvesting them for storage (and eating of course!)

Thank youuuuu

MEW x

[Wombat]

Hey Mew!

I just let ours dry out for a day or two, until the outer skin is a bit papery. But then we have a hotter/drier climate....

Nev

[Millymollymandy]

Mine go in our barn for quite a few weeks whilst they dry out on old pallets or racks. Then I'll go through them, rub off dried soil and any papery bits and leave them for a while longer. Then they should be ready to have the stem pulled off and be put into net bags for storage.

[blathanna]

If you have any onions with thick neck you need to use these up first as they wont keep very long. I never store the thick necks with the sound onions in case they set the others bad,

[SueSteve]

I tie mine in bunches of 5 or 6 and hang them on the washing line, they usually stay there for a week or two, until the stalks have dried up. Although most of them get eaten before they can be stored!

[Stonehead]

Three to five days laid out on hardstanding in sunshine and wind (weather permitting) then up to two weeks on wire racks in the byre where there's good airflow.

For really long storage, onions have to be cured for a long time before being tied in strings, bagged (net bags) or racked. Even the slightest hint of moisture in the neck will result in rot.

We spend a lot of time checking and sorting the crop. Small ones are pickled, any misshapen or suspect ones are eaten immediately and only the very best ones go into storage.

Our method definitely works as we ate the last of 2006's onions in late June this year.

Thin-necked, late maturing varieties tend to last longest, while onions grown from seed store better than ones grown from sets (by about two months or so).

We have 300 onions drying outside at the moment (lifted today) with another 300-400 still to lift over the next few weeks depending on variety and whether grown from seed or sets. We also have a couple of hundred shallots and a lot of garlic curing in the byre.

Here's hoping we get sun tomorrow and Sunday as well...

[blathanna]

Hi Stonehead, hope you don't mind me asking but what variety of onion do you sow from seed and are these onions that you plant out in autumn and overwinter into the following summer.

[Stonehead]

Hi Stonehead, hope you don't mind me asking but what variety of onion do you sow from seed and are these onions that you plant out in autumn and overwinter into the following summer.

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've had my hands full as usual. I wrote a detailed post about onions on my blog a week or so back. Hopefully this well help.

[mew]

thanks for that guys - mine are now drying in the greenhouse - have no wire racks unfortunately.

Stonehead - excellent blog - really informative, interesting and fun to read.

[Stonehead]

thanks for that guys - mine are now drying in the greenhouse - have no wire racks unfortunately.

Stonehead - excellent blog - really informative, interesting and fun to read.

Our racks use off-cuts of weld mesh, rabbit netting, the bottom of a clothes rack that Baldowrie gave us and a barbecue grill. All work well!

[mew]

Hi Stonehead

Im sure MOH can whip me up a makeshift rack of some kind, hes a dab hand these days, particularly on the reduce, reuse front - he loves wooden pallets........

Thanks again