Today I wanted to talk about ONIONS - our onions did very well this year, not as well as some years but I am certainly not complaining!! I have now picked all 4 kinds that I had grown this year and already put new ones in for the fall growing season to harvest just before frost!
Each year I grow the standard white and yellow kitchen cooking onions, as well as the Walla Walla huge yummy sweet onions.
Usually for me, I know when it's time to pick because the tops start to shrivel up and turn brown, HOWEVER the past 2 years we have been soaked with so much rain that I couldn't wait for that, as you would reach down to pick an onion for supper, I started noticing that they were getting mushy, hmmm, time to yank them I said, only because if they continue to get the drenching that they have been getting they will start to rot right down the center and we certainly don't want that to happen.
Above you can see some of the onions that WERE ready, tops have turned brown and have shriveled up, this is completely normal, the weeds are NOT lol but its been so wet it was hard controlling the weeds this year
and now these ones above, see the tops are yet green, but if you were to grab ahold of one of them to yank out, it feels mushy in your hands ~ these are the ones I said were coming out whether they were finished or not
so our son Dakota and the hubby and I got to work, yanking and pulling onions, let me tell you it certainly took awhile, we had hundreds of cutting onions to pull and get ready to hang to dry as well as over 150 of the Walla Walla onions! I had also put in 75 of the Texas Sweet onions, however we pulled those awhile ago as I was not pleased with them, and won't be growing them again here in my area.
Just look at those luscious onions, I could eat an onion every day and never tire of them!
Happy now that the job is done :)
so now it's time to take these onions to the side of the house, we will sit under the canopy at the end of our small greenhouse and get busy
what a haul, we had 4 loads of onions!
braiding the onions to hang, and yes, he takes his job VERY seriously
not what I had in mind, but eh . . . he is happy and I am not going to complain!
men and boys lol I won't even say what they were talking about!
it took about an hour to pull and get onions ready to hang, but we had fun while doing it
once we had them in clusters we simply added a few screws under the canopy and hung them, this is so they can dry properly out in the heat without the rain getting to them, they need lots of air circulation to dry properly
the underside is simply loaded down, we will allow them to hang until the tops dry completely, then they will be put into onion sacks and hung in the basement but NOT in my root cellar, I don't want it smelling of onions in that enclosed room
and just hope that they don't start dropping on our heads when we sit out there
the ones we hung were the regular kitchen cutting onions, however the Walla Walla onions we have laying out in the greenhouse to dry
when the Walla Walla sweet candy onions are dry and ready, I will slice, dice and chop them up for the freezer, the sweet candy onions DO NOT store well, they won't last just drying and hanging like we do the kitchen onions, I have always used my FoodSaver bags for freezing, however my mother just bought herself a new model and in the manual it says NOT to use them for onions, hmmm, I am still alive and have been doing them in mine for years, of course I had to run grab my manual to see if mine said that, and NOPE it did not, something has changed since I purchased mine years ago, since it is now in the new manual, so for your own protection, I would suggest you follow your own brain, whereas I on the other hand, have done it and will continue to do it this way, they do suggest however that a ziploc brand baggie is ok to use for freezer. Use your own judgement!!!! They say that the FoodSaver brand of packaging doesn't allow any air circulation and can cause a harmful bacteria to grow and also the gasses can "expand" the bag, whereas a ziploc baggie does allow some air circulation and that is why they can be used.
This is a bag of the Texas Sweet onions we put up into the freezer last month. It won't be long and all of those onions will be either hangin' in the basement or in my freezer, well, the ones I keep, we always share with neighbors and friends, not to mention the family of course!! Each time someone stops I find myself asking, "Do you need any onions, beans, potatoes?" HA HA I always grow a ton more than I need even for all the storing I do, and what a better way than to share the wealth!!
I will be back to talk about carrots next time, since I have just pulled them all and am going to be canning them up for the root cellar!
