Onion Harvest

Over the past few weeks, our onions have bulbed up and the leaves died back. We let them cure in the ground for about a week, and last weekend we finally pulled the last of them. We spread them out on the (new) countertop in the screened-in porch to dry.

This weekend I snipped off the leaves and roots and brushed off the remaining dirt to get the onions ready to store. Here's our harvest:

The ones in the colander are the ones that are completely cured and ready store (meaning that their leaves and necks were totally dried). It's hard to tell in the picture, but it's about half yellow and half red onions, even though most red ones are hiding at the bottom. 

The onions left on the counter are the ones that didn't quite seem completely dried. I cut the leaves anyway to make more room, but left a long neck that we can check next weekend to see if they are ready to store. It's important that they are fully dried before you store them, or else they can get moldy. We planted Copra and Red Zephyr, varieties noted for being good for storage, so we are hoping that they get us through the winter.

This harvest photo shows 110 onions. We used about a dozen when we made our bread and butter pickles the other day, and we've used several more throughout the late spring and early summer, stealing them from ourselves when we needed one. 

That's a really good showing for the onions! On plan we had 123, but we planted maybe 50 more of some sets that Kirk's parents gave us last spring (we also replaced some seedlings we lost). That means we ended up harvesting maybe 80 percent of what we planted, which is pretty good.

Our plan, once the onions are all cured, is to store them in the basement (cool, dark, and not too dry) in mesh bags, probably hanging from a floor joist. Ditto for the garlic, which is fully cured but still hanging in the workshop for now. Hopefully this will keep them fresh for the whole winter until we have chives and green onions again in the spring!