Good morning! I'm getting ready to harvest my onions and I wanted to show
you guys a few things to look for to know when it's time to harvest.
Then I'm going to walk through the process I use to cure my onions for
long-term storage. So let's take a look. The first thing
that you want to look for is that the tops of your onions have started to flop.
So you can see here these guys have gone from being
upright to completely flopped over. Now this entire patch has flopped over,
typically what you want to look for is about half to three quarters of your
crop has begun to flop over. These guys got
knocked over by a storm and I've just kind of let them sit out here
so these are probably a little past where you would typically harvest
but it gives you an idea what you're going to be looking for.
So in combination with the tops falling over
another cue to look for is that this skin
where the stem attaches to the bulb has started to become
papery and dry. Now what this is telling you is that this foliage is
no longer providing any kind of sustenance to the bulb and
that growth is no longer occurring. Your onions are not going to get any
bigger after the foliage looks like this so there is no point in leaving them in
the ground any longer, they're done. So that being said you can
harvest onions any time after the bulbs have sized
up-- this is the optimal timing for long-term storage. Something else to be
aware of is that there are different types of
onions that will store for different lengths of time.
So for example, this guy back here is a Candy onion
and this one is used more for fresh eating and it's only going to have an
optimal storage life of maybe about three months. Versus up here
I've got a, this is a Patterson yellow long-term
storage onion. Properly cured I've had these last up to
a year in storage. So if you've got different types of
onions inter-planted with different storage lengths it's probably a good
idea to keep them separated so that you are using your short-term storage onions
first. I'm gonna go ahead and get these out of
the ground. Do be aware that this stem is quite fragile at this point so if you
can avoid just ripping them out by the stem that's a
good idea. Gently loosening them with your hands
first or if you have really heavy soil maybe
coming in with like a little trowel and just kind of loosening the dirt around
them, but just try to avoid snapping off that
stem. The other thing that I want to mention
is that my dad likes to tell me that my
grandpa's old adage was always never let the rains of August fall on
your onions and while my harvest time is a little
earlier than August nowadays, that adage rings true because
you want to avoid if at all possible watering your onions about a week or two
before they're ready for harvest. Now obviously you can't control
the rains but if your onions are close to being ready
and the forecast is calling for a lot of big downpours like within
you know the next couple days it's a good idea to get your onions
out of the ground before that point because
again, if they're soaking up a lot of moisture the curing process is going to
take even longer and chances are they may not store as
well and might be prone to things like black rot. All right so we've got all
those up, I'm gonna grab the other side as well
and then I'm gonna set these up for curing for curing. This is how I
do it. I've seen a lot of advice out there
saying to let them dry in the sun for a day or two.
I never put my onions in direct sun and this is what has worked best for me.
It may vary from climate, it may vary on the intensity of your sunlight,
as with everything there are a lot of variables in gardening. This is how I do
it and what has worked well for me. So the main thing that you want to focus
on when curing onions is good air
circulation. You want these to dry out as quickly as
possible and to avoid any kind of damp situations.
So as you can probably see this is my kid's trampoline
I'm using this for right now because it's kind of got this breathable
mesh base, it's up and elevated keeping the onions out of the way of like
curious pets and other things that might chew on them and drag them off,
it's shaded so it's going to get air movement but it's not going to get
direct sun. And I'm actually going to let these
out here for about a day or two to dry and then
I'm going to move them into the barn. So I'm just going to lay these all out
in a single layer, the more space you can give them the
better but if you're pretty tight on space
I find that as long as the bulbs aren't covered up with
the stems it's fine, you can kind of have these stems overlapping
but just keep air circulation in mind. And you don't have to fuss with cleaning
the dirt off, I mean if you have excessive clumps you can kind of brush
the clumps off, but a little bit of dirt on these bulbs
while they're drying is not going to hurt anything.
So I'll continue to harvest and lay them all out like this. Like I said, I'm gonna
let these dry here for maybe about a day or two just
depending on how busy I get, then I will go ahead and move them into
the barn. Now, if you don't have a barn, a garage, a covered porch,
basically anything where they are going to be covered and protected from the
elements but again good air circulation--
warm and dry is optimal. And same thing you want to get them as much in a single
layer as possible, ideally you want to lay them on
something that's got air circulation even from
the underside. So I like to use a screen set between two saw horses,
I've used pallets and just set them between the rows of the pallets which
has worked really nice. And then you're going to let them cure
from anywhere from two to four weeks. And what you're going to look for
when they're done curing... kitty... is that these roots are going to be just
completely dried up and real wiry, the stems are going to be completely
dried down and almost crispy and you'll also feel that these
outer layers of skin or peel are going to get very dry
and kind of shrink away from the bulb a little bit and at
that point you can come along and braid your onions or snip the tops off
or what have you. So once they're at that point
you can move them ideally into a cool dry location-- so if you have a basement
or a root cellar, I will typically put them in our
basement, I will either hang them in braids
or I will put them in something like a crate
or a bushel basket. But again anything that's going to provide some
air circulation to those bulbs as they're sitting in
storage. And with long-term storage onions, with
proper curing and storage your onions can last anywhere from 9 to
12 months. Now of course you can pull them out at any time
during all of this and use them but be sure to use,
if you have short-term storage onions planted, be sure to use those
first. Now if you have any other tips that have worked really well for you
be sure to let me know in the comments below and if you find content like this
helpful please consider subscribing to my
channel Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching and I'll see you
next time!