Onions! 2021 Harvest Notes

Our onion crop, up to this point (and I stress up to this point), looks real good.  The best we've ever had!  Now, we just have to get to the finish line.  With garlic and with onions, we have noticed that our warm, humid days and nights wreak havoc on them.  They grow really well, but once harvested, they tend to get soft, not cure, and rot!  It is discouraging to grow something for months only to have things fall apart after harvest when you are trying to store the onions.

In the photo below, you can see some of the crop of onions.  We planted three varieties: Texas Sweet 1015, White Onions, and Creole Onions.  When the green tops of the plant bend over, the bulb will not grow any more.  It has reached its full potential.  I pull them at this point.  If they don't bend over, I wait until the onion tops start to brown, then I pull them.

As they were growing, I kept them covered with mulch to discourage weed pressure which compete for fertility with the onions.  Once they get a little older, I pull the mulch and dirt away from the onions.  I learned that if you don't do this, your onions will not bulb.

The onions were all nice, but some of them were very nicely sized.  Here is a big, fat Texas sweet that I can't wait to eat!

Once I pull them, I shake the dirt off of the roots and lay them to dry on a screen to allow air flow all around them.  

Once they've dried like this for a couple days, I bring them to the patio where we have an old shelf that we stack the onions on.  We position a box fan underneath them and a ceiling fan above to blow air on them constantly to help them dry quickly.  It is important to keep your eye peeled so that you catch any onions that are getting soft.  For those we put them in the fridge and quickly eat them before they go bad.

We hope to get most of them dried where they will be shelf stable for a couple months while we eat them.  For the rest, we'll chop them up and freeze them for future use in almost everything we cook!