(both laughing)
- You ready to cry?
- (sighs) I am.
- You better be because this
(Jacque laughs)
is the Onion Overload.
(light uptempo music)
Jacque, it's finally time.
- It's been- - Had my eye on this bad boy.
- A long time coming.
This is the onion bed that you actually tried
to steal from a little bit ago.
- [Jacques] It's true.
I got, I did not get away with it. (laughs)
- And this time, you know, I got a lot of onions.
I actually have way more back on the drying rack
than I do right here.
But these are the ones that we care about.
These are the big ones.
You can even smell that sweetness in the air.
- Yeah, I know.
- A little sweet allium action.
- I've not had it at all.
- So let's chat my friends about onions.
A quick little primer because I think this is it.
It's a confusing topic.
Bulbing onions specifically,
like if you're growing leaks, easier, in my opinion.
- No problem.
Spring onions easier, shallots easier.
Bulbing onions, difficult.
Why?
- One crucial mistake, of course, is
whether you need a short day, neutral or long day onion.
And it's just literally how many hours
of sun you get in the daytime.
We're a short day onion.
And so if we grew a long day onion here
they wouldn't actually,
- They wouldn't pull. - they wouldn't get this big.
- Yeah, because basically it's a trigger point.
- Yeah.
- Right, once the onion sees enough daylight
it will then start the bulbing process.
Some onions need, let's say 14 to 16 hours.
- Yep.
- It will never get 14 to 16 hours of daylight in San Diego.
Why, this is the counter intuitive part
for a lot of beginners, because you'd think areas
with supposedly better weather are longer days.
It's actually not true at all.
Think about Alaska, right?
When I was up there, I went up there for my 30th birthday,
11:00 PM I'm out there casting
(laughing)
they called me first cast, Kev.
I was catching fish all day long out there
and all night because it was completely light.
Long days.
- Yeah.
- That's why some of the biggest vegetables
show up in Alaska.
So we have a short day onion here.
Why, cause it's the only one that would quite frankly work.
And that's the problem you're probably gonna run
into when you're growing onions.
But Jacque, now we're at the point
where it's time to harvest and how do we know?
- There's a good example right there.
- Break ya neck as, who was the rapper there?
- I think it was DMX, right?
- Was it DMX or was it Xzibit?
I think it was Xzibit, Break ya Neck.
Do you remember Ian?
- [Ian] Isn't it Protect Ya Neck?
- Protect Ya Neck?
That was by Sir Rhymes?
- Oh, Busta, Busta was Break Ya Neck.
- Oh man, we're all clowning right now.
- Yeah, sorry hip hop fans.
(laughing)
- Not me.
- It's one of those for sure.
Oh, that's a double onion, what the heck?
- Is it?
- Look.
- Oh what?
What is it going on there?
- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
- I think we got a generic marvel.
- Oh my.
- Double cheeked.
- Wait, wait, it's cheeked up.
(laughing)
What is this dude?
- I don't know.
- Is this more than, is this like a garlic onion?
I mean it's growing like a,
- Oh, whoa,
- There's like a knot.
- That's so weird in there.
There's like an onion growing out of the onion.
- Hold on, hold on, hold on.
So this one I think might be the sacrificial
like I might not cure this one
(laughing)
cause I'm actually just really like
oh look at all the roly poly's in there.
This is a deformity.
I've never seen this happen before
but you can see there's a lot of pill bugs in there.
Hopefully that's not replicated
but it probably shouldn't be because - That's weird.
- Every other one is a full bulb.
I've never seen this before in my life.
- Never.
- That is absolutely crazy.
Well we'll let that cure I guess and see what happens.
You wanna pull this guy here Jacque?
- Yeah, don't mind if I do.
- Look at that.
- Ooh,
- That's what you wanna see right there.
- That's an onion.
- That's what you wanna see.
So you're looking for the neck to break
or the stem to become floppy.
That indicates that a lot
of the energy has already started to send down to the bulb.
And you want it at this point because what
you're gonna see is we're gonna cure these onions.
- Right.
- Or dry them out for storage
cause I can't use this many in one fell swoop.
- No, no, no.
- I can try but I'm not gonna do a great job.
And so you need to have the neck fully dried
out and that's what we're gonna do.
But first we just gotta harvest these guys.
- Yeah, and for context I don't know if I could even
find one small enough in here.
- Maybe in your garden.
- I was gonna say this is, maybe this is actually
the biggest onion I got this year.
- Really?
- This size.
Yeah.
- But I mean to be honest this is a nice size.
- It is a usable size, very convenient.
- That's a market size.
- Very convenient.
- But I'm actually really proud to get these reds cause
I've never really grown significant size red onions before.
- I'm really curious.
- I'm really pleased about that.
- If this is a shallot or a red onion.
I don't know if you remember.
- So what I think happened is I think the red
onions just did not bulb.
They did not fully bulb up.
Cause like in theory, I should have let this go.
- Right.
Oh, that one has two sides.
- Because it almost looks like a double.
- I was thinking it could be a shallot honestly
- Could be.
- Cause the onions are so big,
maybe that's the biggest shallot I've ever seen before.
- Maybe it's just a monster shallot
as Gordon Ramsey would say, well let's get to harvesting.
We have a lot of a lot of these to harvest.
Give us a count.
Give us a count in the comments.
How many you think we actually are gonna get out here.
- But take a look at this cause this is a sleeper.
- Yeah.
So I saw this and I was like, oh this one failed.
It's the only one that failed.
But watch this
- Uh oh.
It is a perfect onion.
- Little secret under the surface.
- And this one right here to.
- That's what we call buried treasure.
- So like there's a perfect red onion.
- That's a nice onion.
Yeah. Really nice.
- All right.
So Jacque, I think you might be right.
These do look like shallots or bowling pins.
Look at that thing.
- That's so crazy.
- It has the shallot like shape.
It looks like something that wouldn't have just deformed
and not bulbed out fully.
- Yeah.
- Cause it is developed here.
- Exactly.
- So it's just, these are just monsters.
- Literally the biggest shallot
I didn't even know they could get that big.
- Yeah, something magical happened in this bed.
- Yeah.
- I'll tell you that much.
I don't really understand it myself.
(upbeat music)
All right.
- Do you think this is gonna be the biggest one?
(laughing)
Normal size head instead of a big head?
What the,
Look at this guy.
Did you take performance enhancing drugs?
No.
(laughing)
Looks like the boys got their hands full
with some big bulbs.
We'll see you at the curing table.
Just another day, right Jacque?
- I mean I'm used to it.
(laughing)
- I'm not even done yet guys.
Jacque's on sort, I'm on pull.
So friendly competition.
We think this is the biggest one.
Question is, how much do you think it weighs?
We'll weigh it at the end of the video.
Drop your comments in.
The winner wins.
(laughing)
So this is definitely the most successful crop
we've ever grown and that goes without saying but,
look at the varieties, you have beautiful,
these are yellow granex onions.
I actually don't remember Jacque,
The rest of the varieties here.
- Yeah,
- These clearly are shallots
cause there's no way you'd have this uniform of an error.
- Right.
So this is definitely a big old red shallot
but we got white, red and yellow onions and shallots
and there's some small leaks in here.
There's actually still leaks in the garden.
Weirdly, and you'll see this on an upcoming episode
one of the biggest failures is our garlic.
It actually did not do well
but I guess we've redeemed ourselves.
- Yeah, this is killing,
- With the onions this year.
Now we have to preserve all these
cause there's no way these are going
into the kitchen that quickly.
So what you'd normally do, it's mid-June right now.
Unfortunately not a lot
of sun actually been raining the last couple days Jacque.
- (laughing) Very weird, very weird.
You're supposed to cure these
which means you leave them outside basically
like this, nice airflow
for seven to 10 days in a relatively sunny area.
- Until you got roots that are like dry, like a brush
basically.
- Dry like a brush.
This isn't even quite there yet.
- Yeah.
- You know, dry like a brush.
But also importantly on the bulbing onions,
you actually want this to feel nice and dry as well.
Why, because you're gonna cut that off.
- Right.
And you don't wanna leave it open wound.
- Open wound, right?
And so you want it to fully dry and seal.
Basically it's the sealing itself off.
So what I was thinking Jacque is
cause this table can't really fit all these.
- (laughing) Yeah.
- Maybe we'll get a little creative and hang some in here.
- Let's do it.
- Why not? - More airflow.
- Why not?
- Well we got weigh a little bit first.
- What's your prediction?
I think I might have it,
but those might be more dense, you know.
- I think, yeah, this one kind of tripped me up.
- Yeah, this one's like tall.
- Yeah, So should we guess or just weigh it?
Keep it silent.
- Let's just weigh it, yeah.
- All right.
- You're up.
- Here we go.
- I mean that's weight.
- You're right.
Yeah, you're right.
- Okay. Oh, two pounds, 14 ounces.
So basically almost three pounds, 60 ounce.
Yeah.
- Almost three pound onion.
Yeah. Almost a three pound onion.
Okay, you're up next.
This one I'm gonna say is three.
Nope it's less.
- Two, seven.
- Two, seven,
- Two pounds, seven and a half ounces.
- So that's around two and a half pounds.
This one's gonna be less.
Two and a quarter.
- Yep. Yep.
Two pounds, six ounces.
So this is our winner at nearly three pounds
two pounds and 14 ounces.
That's insane.
- I can't believe that the,
- I mean that's just insane.
- What'd you say the world winning one was, like 13?
- Eighteen.
Eighteen pounds.
- Dude, that's so outta here. - So my best.
But the world record's worst probably.
(laughing)
He'd be very unsatisfied with this.
Let's hang the rest of these guys up.
(upbeat music) - Let's get curing.
- So we hung a ton up, but honestly that looks really cool.
Look at that.
That looks so cool.
- That does look really cool.
- That is the farm right there.
- Yeah, you walk in that farm.
I don't know if you're walking out.
- You're not walking out.
Yeah. Not without a good meal, you know.
Hey, anyways
so what we're gonna do is we're gonna try a braid.
Our friend Melissa Norris, she actually sent me a message,
She said, you should braid these.
I said, I don't know how.
- I can't, I can't braid.
- Well at least I can't do it well,
it wasn't in my skill set.
and so Jacque's cooked up a little treat here.
- A little work around take the intertwine,
- Yep, yep, yep.
- I just stacked four of them like this.
So they're in a nice little bundle.
I'm literally just going to do my old overhand-knot-
- until-it-stop-slipping knot, cause that's all I know.
- You're classic.
- Give me some of the extra lead there.
- There's that.
I'll do the same on it over here.
Okay, so now could go like this.
Got my bundle onions here
and I could still hang 'em from here.
So now even the small onions get their day in the sun.
I don't know if I'm sold
on this being the best method, but,
- I am.
- It's working.
- I am.
I mean look, I got my little bindle.
- There you go, that's the way.
- My bindle.
Yeah, I mean these ones,
little weight concentration for sure.
- Real question is, how are you gonna eat all of these?
- Swing low, sweet chariot.
Look at that.
- You got any ideas on your preservation
or cooking?
- Well okay, so,
- Obviously could cure 'em and just eat 'em.
- Right, so expect this on the channel guys.
We're gonna do caramelized onions for preservation.
So I think there's a couple methods I've been
researching where we can go a little bit deeper
on the caramelization process,
make it a little bit easier to preserve.
- Oh, okay.
- So you add some balsamic at the end.
- Interesting.
- Giving it a little acid, right?
Then in the fridge I believe that lasts a bit longer.
I'm gonna try to do DIY onion powder.
So refill some of the spices that I've been using
that you got me actually.
And I'm gonna try,
a couple of people have been saying onion jams,
which is basically like a caramelization process
that I believe you then just add some sugar
and pepper into or something like that.
- Right, to help make it last even longer.
- Yeah. And then there's
of course we have the freeze dryer, we have the dehydrator.
We could, we could mess around with some of those methods.
I really am into the idea of french onion soup.
One of my, one of my favorite soups, honestly.
- Some sourdough.
- Yeah, mix in some sourdough.
Honestly, you guys tell us cause we could probably
do every single idea that you give us.
We'll try, might be a little oniony
on the channel for a while.
(soft music)
But hopefully this gave you some good insight
on how to grow onions well if you have any questions
we'll probably do a full onion guide on the main channel.
But until next time, let's keep working here Jacque.
- Yeah, we got a lot of onions to go through.
- We'll see you on the next one,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
- So now even the small onions, get their day in the sun.
(laughing)
- [Ian] I was trying to do like a full pan around.
- Yeah.
- [Ian] There's just too many onions.
- Too many.