Onion Harvesting

We grow winter onions and eat them only in early spring before they get to hot. They are good for scallions only. I’ve left onions in to long and had them rot in the ground. I’ve also had bulb onions that over wintered fine. Like potatoes it depends on the variety. One time I got my onions out to late and left them in the ground because they were as big as 50 cent pieces. The next year there was onion husk in the middle of the onion from the previous years growth but those onions grew to normal size.

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I grow shallots from seed here too. My season is longer. 120 days in ground they should be ripe. So mine go in in April, probably the 20th or so. Mine were ripe in July. My onions were small this year. Shallots came out OK, but low yielding. Some of the larger onions, the garlic, the shallots, I braid for easy access. I have bags full of small onions and shallots.
The elongated yellows there are shallots. These are some of my braids. I hang them also on the other side of these cabinets and in the kitchen too.

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I bought shallot bulbs and had miserable results. A primer on shallot growing would be wonderful, Drew. Yours look good!

I never tried the start ups. Now you can buy seeds. And I grow about the same as onions, and I too, lose a lot, but with seeds, not a great loss. I have been growing Zebrune shallots, if you look you will see a round one at top of the shallot braid, leftover seeds from 2 years ago of Camelot shallots.
They have to be handled with kid gloves when small. Watered more, good temps outside etc. I don’t so lose about 50% of the seeds. Germination is poor too, so the fact you failed is not unusual, they are hard to grow. I’m still working on it too.

Seeds are a pain but I’m used to it. I start inside, as I do with some flowers peppers and tomatoes. If the starts die quickly maybe they need acclimation to temps and sun, so handle those too with kid gloves and slowly expose to light. Increasing light over a 2 week period before planting out.

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The tops on these red ones went down about 3 weeks ago. Today is a good harvesting day. Pulled real easy. Still waiting on the Australian Brown and Walla Walla to go down. These are for storage.

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Mine are just pushing bulbs now. They look quite promising this year, hope I avoid the black mold

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My Candy onions. The rectangle is a dollar bill because a quarter is too small

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Wow…what in the world do you do with those? I grew Alisia Craigs for a few years and had some monsters…but i ran into the problem that they would get soft/go bad quickly…are these keeper types?

I’m a huge onion fan. Sprinkle in some garlic…wife runs for cover!

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They keep reasonably well - particularly given that I don’t have enough cool places for keeping

They take forever to cure at that size, tho

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I like the long storing type for mass quantities, but grow a few shallots and others for fun. Lois, those look ready to braid, Mine need a bit more time, I picked some early too, as most were ready.


Some of the shallots grew well, most not!

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Isn’t Candy the best? Mine will store till mid Jan. Ours got frosted just after transplanting and weren’t so big, but still good yields.

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I’ll have to try Candy next year.

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I don’t braid them, I cut the tops, but they’re still not ready for that, except for a couple of runts. One downside of the size

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I don’t either but my wife does. She sews and all, she prefers to hang them in the kitchen.

Store them in the garage.

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What are those big whites?

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Cortland, strong, super long storage for whites. Those are from 2 year seed too. Impressive onion.

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Well the results are in as far as the best keeper that I have grown (for my area). It’s almost mid February and these are what is left of Australian Brown harvested 7/8. I had to use the red ‘keepers’ (Ruby, I believe) first as they were sprouting like crazy. I’m going to plant a few of these out for seed come March when the seedlings go out.
IMG_1622

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I’ve been sorting thru my [7/24] Candy onions for a month now, still have plenty of sound ones left. I’ve put some into the refrigerator.

I do note that it seems the very largest ones, the ones I’m so proud of, are the first to start to go bad, tho.

Gonna try some of a longer-keeping variety this time round, to see how that works

But I’m pretty pleased with Candy, overall

Thanks Anne, good to know.

I am a bit surprised that your are running into sprouting onions this early. My main crop is Ailsa Craig, which is a large sweet onion, and not a great storage one, but I still have a few that have not started growing yet in the cold room. Maybe my AC’s are doing OK afterall.

Yep, so true, esp of the sweet ones. Those have to be the first to go into relishes.

I had read that too so you must have a great strorage area. I should perhaps give it a go. It is a ‘long day’ onion and I’m below that latitude so I was reluctant, but so is WallaWalla and that grows great here. Thanks.
Maybe you can tell us more about how you store your onions.