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!

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!

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!

2018 Onion Harvest

The onions look a little tired, don't they?  Some of them are laying down.  Actually, that is the sign that it is time to harvest them.  The weight of the onion greens just cause the neck of the onion to bend over.  Not all of them will bend over at the same time.

Onions ready for harvest

You can see how the neck bends over on this white onion...

Same thing on a yellow onion.  This one is a 1015 Texas Sweet.  It is supposed to be similar to a Vidalia onion.

After pulling the leaning onions out of the ground, I lay them on top of the row to cure a little bit.  The only thing is, you don't want the onions to "sunburn."  So what you have to do is zig zag the onions so that the onion tops lay over the bulb of the onions. 

I recommend leaving them out for one day.  I left them out for two days like this and a few of the smaller ones started getting soft.  I took them inside quickly and cut them up and froze them in zip loc bags.  Some were a real nice size, like this Texas Sweet...

The Creole Reds were a little disappointing in size, but I've never been able to have much luck getting them to grow into a nice size onion.

The white onions grew to a good size!

I trimmed the roots and snipped the necks of the onion about an inch above the bulb and brought them inside.  Then I put them into milk crates to allow air flow.

I'll keep checking on them to ensure we don't lose any.  If they start getting soft, we will quickly cube them and freeze them.  It is always nice to have a good bit of onions around the house.  I love to cook with them.  Hopefully they will cure and will last in our pantry so that we can enjoy them for a long time to come.

The Onion Crop is IN!

I ordered my onions to plant this year in the garden from Dixondale Farms, the same place I mail-ordered them from last year.  You can click on the link underlined below to go to their very helpful website and learn all about planting, growing and harvesting onions.  There is a map on the website that helps you to select the perfect variety or varieties for your growing area.  In Louisiana, you want to select Short-day varieties, so this year I chose a bunch of Red Creole Onions and a bunch of 1015Y Texas Super Sweet Onions.

I received them by mail as they arrived in a box with planting instructions.  Two bunches were inside - just as I ordered.  Now a bunch has between 50-75 plants in it, so if all goes well, we'll have plenty of onions in 2017.  That will be just fine with me as we LOVE onions.  Smothered Onions on top of some hamburger patties cooking in a cast iron skillet is doggone hard to beat!

Red Creole Onions

Our onion crop last year left a lot to be desired.  The ones that we did harvest were small.  I take full responsibility for that and I learned from my mistakes.  Last year I planted the onions in a new area of the garden.  That new area contained topsoil, but it was not improved land like the other parts of the garden.  There was no organic material or compost worked in and the soil was compacted.  It just wasn't a good growing medium for onions.

Onions like loose, crumbly soil and that's just what I gave them this year.  I planted the onions in the soil that I had just turned over after harvesting our sweet potato crop.  There was lots of decaying leaves mixed in the soil and it was black-colored and rich looking.  You can see evidence of that below:

Good Onion Growing Soil

I worked up 3 rows in the old sweet potato patch.  I did leave about a five foot section out on the east side as there was some nice Black Seeded Simpson lettuce growing there that I didn't want to disturb. I planted all of the onion plants following the planting instructions and gently watered them in.  I'll keep them weeded and add some chicken litter to the soil according to the directions given in the growing guide.

I planted these on December 17th, and the Onion Growing Guide says that you can count on 110 days to maturity.  That means on April 7th, 2017, I can count on harvesting some nice onions.  As the harvest date gets closer, I'll do some research on curing and storing them.  We'll probably dice some and freeze them in Ziploc bags as that makes it real convenient when making gumbos and other tasty dishes that use lots of onions.