garden 2010- update-onion harvest

The time came this morning to harvest the onions. They had bolted  so were done growing and were laying over with a good bit of rain forecast in the next few days. Rather than risk losing them we decided to go ahead and get them out of the ground. We pulled the  beds and laid them all  out in  the sun for a couple of hours  and then  laid them in racks under the carport so that they could finish curing under there.

All total we harvested somewhere between 60 and 70 pounds of onions which should be enough to get us through the year or very near to it. A couple dollar purchase of seed, a few hours of  time and  it will now save us  about 50-75 dollars  in the next year so we do not need to purchase them. We had quite a few that stayed very small  and while that is a bit disappointing it gives me a fair bit to dehydrate, freeze and use immediately. I see french onion soup in my future. Most of the onions were a bit smaller than we had wished for but for  a first year attempt at growing bulbing onions it was a pretty good yield. We will plant some more this fall to try and over winter  them and will also have another crop of green onions this fall. Of the three varieties we planted the yellow ones out did the  white and red by far. I think next year we will stay with the yellow variety and see how they do. Once these guys are cured I am going to try braiding some as well as a couple other methods of storage. When that time comes I will do another update on  storage.