Onions Coming in

At around this time each year like clockwork, the onion harvest begins.  It's a good thing.  We're out of onions and have been purchasing them.  To be fair, we like onions and cook with them often.  In harvesting the onions, it is a process that takes a little while to get them where we want them - inside and/or cut up and in the freezer.  Here's a shot from about a month ago, of our onions slowly ripening, all lined up like soldiers.

And here we are again at the tail end of April in the same onion patch.  They don't look quite as lush.  Some are ready to be pulled.

The photo below shows how you know which ones are ripe.  The neck of the onion folds over and the weight of the onion tops causes it to bend to the ground.  It's as if to say, "I give up.  I can't do this anymore."

Once it bends over, it's time to pull it from the ground.  Many people let them dry in the sun in the garden after pulling them.  Here is a photo of a big, fat Yellow Granex Onion.  This is a sweet onion, the ones marketed as Vidalia onions.  I think this is my favorite variety!  We also grow Early Texas White, Texas 1015 Sweet, and Red Creole Onions.

Because it gets so hot and humid here so very quickly, I like to pull them and put them on an expanded metal patio table so that the air can flow around them and begin drying them out.  After two days here, I'll get some clippers and snip off the onion top about an inch from the onion.  I'll let it continue to dry out on the table for a day or two more.

Then we bring them into our onion drying room.  Actually, it is our parlor, or living room that I've taken over momentarily, spreading a blue tarp on the floor to catch onion skins and dirt.  We lay them on a baker's rack for drying.

We keep a fan going all day to allow for good air flow.  Sometimes, if you don't, the onions will get soft and go bad on you.  We can't have that going on!

This is about half of the crop so far.  Each day more fall over and I pull them and put them on the table.  They'll eventually move here.  No more buying onions for quite a while.  We'll eat all of these and we will also chop some of these up and freeze in ziploc bags for cooking with.  Dixondale Farms, the company we purchase the onion starts from, just sent out a recipe for Carmelized Onion Quiche.  It sounds like something we'd like to try out.  I'll pick out a few of the Yellow Granex onions and get them chopped up to make that quiche!

Got the Onions in The Ground

Last week we got our onions in the mail from Dixondale Farms in Carizo Springs, TX.  We received one bundle of the Short Day Sampler.  The Sampler includes 48 plants that are a mixture of the 1015 Texas Super Sweet, Texas Early White, and the Red Creole.  We like to plant this one as it is a nice variety.

We also got two bundles of the Yellow Granex Onion plants.  That contains 96 onion plants.  The Yellow Granex onion is the hybrid that most people would recognize as the Vidalia sweet onion.  I got them out of the box and prepared the soil, using the onion planting guide provided.  We grow these each year and have had great success with them, usually able to grow all the onions we'll need all year.

The guide contains helpful information on how far apart to plant them, how deep, and how far apart the rows should be.  We've always found that if you follow the instructions, you'll have no problem growing delicious onions.  I got busy with the hoe working the soil and started planting.  I was racing the sun, but by the time the sun was dipping over the horizon, I had the job completed.

And then...  Then we got the news that we'll be experiencing a winter storm early next week, bringing temps to around 20 degrees.  Dixondale Farms helpfully sent out an email with instructions on preparing for extremely cold weather and freezing.  They suggest covering the plants with a tarp and watering thoroughly before a freeze as moist soil holds heat from the day and insulates the bulb and tender roots.  You can bet we'll be doing both of those things prior to the deep freeze.

Hopefully, we'll save the onions and will enjoy delicious onions this summer in yet another bumper crop.

Bringing the Onions In

Each year we purchase onion sets from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, TX.  I always order Yellow Granex, White, and Creole Onions.  This spring I planted three and a third rows of onions.  That was the least amount we've ever planted.  I think next year we'll go back to our normal order of 300 sets.  In this photo below, Some of the onions are telling you that they're ripe and ready to pull.

This is how they tell you.  The neck bends over and touches the ground.  When this happens, the onion is signaling to you that it's done growing.  I pull them up at this stage, but I don't bring them in for another day.

I will pull them and lay them on their side and allow the sun to gently cure them or dry them out for one day.  I only pulled the ones that have bent over.  The rest of the onions will be left to grow until they bend over.

But we're not done.  I bring them inside where I've converted the parlor into an onion curing room.  I have a drying rack brought in and have the fans running at full speed.  As the onions come inside, I'll cut off the "onion tails" and under the fan and lower humidity, the onions will begin to cure.  We still watch them closely.  Any that show signs of softening will be diced up and frozen for use in the kitchen later.

We'll go through these pretty quickly.  That's why we're going back to 300 plants for next year.

Just In Time Delivery

Don't you like getting things in the mail?  Sure, we get emails and texts, and that is great.   But there's something special to walk out to the mailbox and open the door to the box to see what the mail carrier brought.  It's always a time of anticipation.  Don't get me wrong, junk mail, political mailers and bills can indeed throw some shade on checking the mail.  But there are good days for checking the mail.

Take yesterday, for example.  There was a box on the island where we always put incoming mail.  It was a USPS box that made me curious as to what it could be.

Well, immediately I saw that it was from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, Texas.  That means our onion order for 2022 had arrived.  I'm excited to get these planted.  This year I ordered 3 bunches of onion plants.  Each bunch contains between 50 - 75 onion plants in them.  So, we'll have roughly 200 onions this year, if the Good Lord's willing.  Each bunch costs $9.00, so that makes the cost about $0.12 per onion.  Dixondale Farms does a good job of sending you information on how to plant your onions for success.  Additionally, during the growing season, they provide you with emails on how to care for them at different growing stages, as well as harvesting and curing.  In looking at the materials, they are a family outfit, and I like that.

Since we are in the Southern region of the United States, we order the Short Day varieties.  These varieties are suited for 10 - 12 hours of sunlight.  I think I ordered the same amount of onion plants as last year, but this year I changed up one of the varieties.

I got two bunches of Short Day Samplers.  The Sampler package contains: Red Creole Onions, Texas Early White Onions, and 1015Y Texas Super Sweet Onions.  I have always liked samplers and this one gives you a good variety of onions that we love.  This year I added a bunch of Yellow Granex onions.  These are most popular sweet onions in America.  In fact, these are shipped to the growers of the famous sweet onions in Vidalia, Georgia.  I'm really looking forward to these!

We had our best onion harvest ever in 2021.  We cooked with them, made French Onion soup with them, and we also dried many jars of them and have in our pantry.  We used the last onion a few weeks ago.  So we're anxious to get these in the ground.  Once we get them planted, in 90-110 days, they'll be mature.  The earlier you plant them, the larger they'll grow.  We love onions!