Nate Checking his Email
It seemed like as good of time as any to harvest some onions. I’m still new at this, however if you don’t try something new, you will never learn. I have four rows of onions, and decided last week to begin the “curing” process. When the onions start falling over on their own, you start by knocking the rest over. This encourages the plant to put all it’s final effort into making a healthy bulb.
Nate Carrying Onions
In the background is a wall of weeds, which seems to help with keeping out critters. I haven’t had much damage other then the lost lettuce.
As I picked the onions, I handed them to Nate. There were quite a few, and he made several trips to the greenhouse. The water tables would become our onion processing area. Everything seemed to fall in place quite well.
A Pile of Onions
Here is the final pile of onions. I added the bottle of Dawn to show some size, and it was the only object around that would be of uniform size from house to house. There are also some Zucchini to the right. The next step is to cut the bulb from the green portion of the plant.
Lots Of Onions
When cutting off the tops, it’s important to cut an inch or more above the bulb. If you skip this step, or cut to low to the bulb, your onions will not properly cure, and may rot in storage. The final step is to leave them to dry in the sun for a day. I figure the greenhouse would be a good of a place as any, and they are drying out as I type.
Update: The greenhouse is far too hot for curing onions. When checking on them around 3:00 PM that day, the tempurate was 100 F. I moved them outside, and constructed a drying rack for future use. In total, they were drying for two days in the sun.
