How Do You Know When Its Time to Pick Your Onions
Hither we are, a whole flavour afterward the offset onion seeds were sown, and those tiny black specks accept slowly grown into a bed of bulging brown (or red, or white) globes pushing their mode out of the soil.
While onions can be harvested and eaten at whatever stage, the most satisfying part of growing onions (in particular, storage onions) is being able to choice a fresh onion from the pantry months after you've picked it from the ground.
Curing makes that possible.
What does it mean to cure onions?
Curing is a month-long process of drying down your onions to prep them for storage. Once properly cured, onions store for a very long time—through the fall and wintertime, and sometimes even spring nether the right conditions.
But not all onions are created equally.
Every bit a full general rule of pollex, long-mean solar day varieties store longer than brusk-day varieties (the "long" in long twenty-four hour period refers to the onion needing 14 to 16 hours of sunday to develop properly), and pungent onions store longer than mild onions.
Mild onions are more often than not big and juicy with thick rings and papery skins that skin easily. They're sugariness enough to eat raw simply they really smoothen as onion rings and bloomin' onions.
Unfortunately, most balmy onions don't last more than ii to three months, fifty-fifty when cured and stored under optimal conditions. If your crop includes balmy onions, you'll want to swallow those offset.
Pungent onions, on the other hand, can keep as long every bit six months or fifty-fifty upwardly to a yr. They're normally smaller in size with thinner rings and tighter skins, and are best known for making you weep when y'all cut them.
The sulfurous compounds that sting your eyes are the aforementioned ones that inhibit rot, so the more pungent the onion is, the longer it will store.
Which onions store the longest?
When it comes to onions, we just have to accept that long-storing onions cannot be grown in the south.
Northern climates, notwithstanding, accept their pick of long-day storage onions that are bred for winter storage. They include white, yellow, and ruby-red globe onions with mild to moderate pungency.
Short-day and intermediate types are mostly sweet onions that store for ane to three months on average.
The exceptions are Red Creole, a short-day ruby-red earth that keeps exceptionally well, and Texas Legend, a short-mean solar day yellow earth that can sometimes terminal up to iv months.
In fact, Cherry-red Creole was my favorite onion to grow when I lived in Southern California because I could count on it to last through Christmas!
| Cultivar | Shelf Life in Storage |
|---|---|
| Ruby-red Wethersfield | 12+ months |
| Copra | 10 to 12 months |
| Stuttgarter | 10 to 12 months |
| Redwing | viii to 10 months |
| Ruby Zeppelin | 6 to 8 months |
| Red Creole (brusque day) | half dozen to 7 months |
| Sterling | 6 months |
| Blush | five to 6 months |
| Highlander | iv to 5 months |
| Ringmaster | iv months |
| Yellow Spanish | 4 months |
| Red River | 3 to 5 months |
| Texas Fable (brusque twenty-four hours) | 3 to 4 months |
7 secrets to harvesting, curing, and storing onions from the garden
Secret #i: Await for half the plants to fall over before you starting time harvesting.
When your onions are vigorously growing through the longer days of jump and summer, their stems are lush and happy and light-green. You might even have a few onion flowers topping those stems.
When the bulbs finish developing in mid to late summer, you'll detect the lowest leaves get-go to xanthous and wither. Shortly later on, the stems will flop over at the neck. It starts with i or two plants, and then the rest, until information technology looks like your whole ingather is dying.
Fear not. The leaves are key in knowing when to harvest!
Await for i-half to three-quarters of your crop to bomb, then bend over the stems of any remaining upright plants. Y'all tin can simply curve them above the bulb with your hands; this is a point for the plants to enter dormancy.
If some of your onions sent up blossom stalks, y'all tin can but go out them be. The leaves around the flower stem will still wither naturally when the onion is ready for harvest, then yous don't have to bend over the stem. I don't recommend cutting information technology off, because it could innovate leaner into the onion during the curing process.
Secret #2: Stop watering your onion ingather before harvest.
When you discover the leaves on the first few plants kickoff to autumn over, terminate watering and go out the onions in the ground for seven to fourteen days (depending on how dry or humid your climate is) to allow them to stop maturing. Withholding water at this stage helps keep the onions from rotting.
The same holds true for rain—if most of your onions are fully grown, harvest them all before a big rainstorm is expected because moisture spells trouble for mature onions.
Clandestine #3: Dry the roots immediately later harvest.
On a dry, sunny day, carefully pull each onion out by the bulb, or dig around the plant to lift the bulb from the soil.
Grabbing the weakened stalk could crusade information technology to pull off entirely, so make certain the stalk stays intact to reduce the likelihood of rot.
Lay the onions out on the footing or in another open, sunny area for a day or 2 to dry the roots.
Secret #iv: Cure your onions then they go along through winter.
After a prissy solar day of getting some sun, motility the onions into a sheltered, shady spot (under a tree, on a covered porch, or in a well-ventilated garage, for example) and spread them out i by ane.
You lot don't need to clean off the onions yet. Just set up them out to dry, dirt and all, until the stems turn chocolate-brown and brittle. This rest menstruation allows the onions to go deeper into dormancy so that they're less susceptible to disease.
If you take absolutely no shade around your house, you can lay them in the sunday merely covered with a thin cotton sheet to prevent sunburn. (Never employ plastic, canvas, or other thick, non-breathable materials, which could stifle them.)
If you often get rain in the summer, you tin can cure your onions in a garage or basement, but turn them over a couple times a week to ensure even drying. While they're curing, onions like it warm (75°F to 80°F) simply breezy.
The most important part of curing is giving them plenty shade and having plenty of air circulation effectually the bulbs.
Because of this, it'due south best to lay them out without crowding them, rather than heaping all your onions into a basket.
This final pace in the curing process takes two to three weeks (and sometimes upward to four weeks, if your summers are very humid).
You want your onions dry, dry, dry. The roots will become stiff and wiry, and the papery outer skins volition dry out and tuck around the bulbs.
Secret #v: Trim the onions so you lot tin can see which ones to use upwards first.
One time the onion tops and roots have fully stale, you can tidy 'em upwards by trimming the roots and cut off the stems with garden scissors. A couple layers of the outside skin will usually flake off with the stems, leaving you with a clean, polish onion.
If y'all had a few onions with blossom stalks growing through the bulbs, use those up first. The flower stalks retain a lot of moisture (even after curing) and will cause the onions to decay quicker in storage. They're perfectly fine to swallow and normally keep for a month or and then.
Onions with blemishes or bruises should also be used upwardly first, besides as onions whose skins came off completely.
Secret #vi: Store onions in a dry, dark, and airy infinite for maximum longevity.
Onions store best in a cool and dry, dark and airy space, inside brown newspaper bags, nylon mesh bags, wire or wicker baskets, milk crates, or burlap sacks.
The recommended temperature for long-term storage is 32°F to 45°F at 65 percent to 70 percent humidity, but should never exceed seventy°F if you want your onions to final. Ideally, you should go along them merely to a higher place freezing simply below room temperature.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Harvesting, Curing, and Storing Garlic
Keep in mind that even after curing, onions are still very much alive and need cool, dry conditions to stay dormant. Any change in temperature or humidity can crusade them to break dormancy and sprout again.
You should check your onions every few weeks for green shoots that might emerge in storage. I once let my onions linger in a warm room for a couple of months, and came back to alien-like green tentacles taking over my shelf.
(The onions were still good to swallow, though—y'all'll know when onions go bad, as the flesh will exist moldy or plow soft and mushy. At that betoken, they tin't be saved.)
Surreptitious #7: Save tiny onions to establish in spring.
If yous happen to have some teeny tiny onions (I commonly get a few that never got around to growing, merely are too small to exist used like shallots), cure them and save them for adjacent yr—you've just grown your very own "set" of onions!
Replant the baby onions in jump, where they'll mature into full-sized bulbs in much less time… and you'll have a brand-new harvest fifty-fifty sooner!
Related: Know When to Grow: A Planting Agenda for Your Garden
Common questions most harvesting, curing, and storing onions
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More posts you might find helpful:
- Bloomin' Onion: Why Some Onions Have Flowers
- The Flim-flam of Knowing When to Harvest Garlic
- The Ultimate Guide to Harvesting, Storing, and Curing Garlic
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This post updated from an article that originally appeared on July 12, 2012.
Source: https://www.gardenbetty.com/how-to-harvest-and-cure-your-onion-crop/
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