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!

For Crying Out Loud!

Do onions make you cry?  Sometimes when I cut them, tears do well up in my eyes.  Tonight, we had T-bone steaks from our bull calf cooked in a cast iron skillet covered in smothered onions and bell peppers.  So good.  The onions kicked the whole meal up a notch, making us almost have tears of joy as we ate.

We are all out of the homegrown onions we harvested this summer and have had to buy onions.  Well, no time like the present to begin thinking about next year's onion crop.  I buy onion plants from Dixondale Farms.  They are a family farming operation down in Carrizzo Springs, Texas that has been growing onions for 107 years.  (I think they have this onion-growing thing mastered!)  You can click that link above to check out their website.  I was looking at my catalog tonight and made my order.

Prior to five years ago, I had never really tried to grow onions, other than growing green onions.  Now I plant them every year.  The first thing you'll want to do is determine what type of variety works best in your area.  Since we are in the deep south, the Short Day Varieties work best for us.  I like to order the Short Day Sampler and I order two bundles.  Each bundle contains 50 - 75 onion plants.  The sampler is just that - in contains a mixture of 1015Y Texas Super Sweet, Texas Early White, and Red Creole onions.  It is very affordable at approximately $9 per sampler bundle.

I receive them in early to mid-January and get them in the ground shortly thereafter.  I have to give positive reviews to Dixondale Farms.  If you order from them, you can receive an email newsletter called "The Onion Patch" that keeps you up to date with proper care of onion plants to guarantee a bumper crop.  They also have onion recipes like the one I cut & pasted below:

Wow!  I have to try this.  I love a good grilled cheese sandwich, but adding grilled onions and mushrooms to it?  Goodness gracious!  Does that sound great?!  Can't wait to try it...

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.