That would be awesome to dry onions on.

I still have a dozen onions (candy and superstar) that are standing, although their leaves are starting to turn.

Bump

I just pulled the majority of my onions. I am not unhappy with the crop, though I think the last week of rain broke some over before their time. Some only got set sized bulbs. A few have never bulbed at all (probably the seedlings I stuck in there to see what they would do.) I noticed the ones in the corners of the beds had bigger root systems than the others. Less competition? Better drainage? There were a few Candys whose necks felt strong, so I left hhem. Of course the wind may take care of them.

I was going to follow them with bush beans. I think I will wait on those, so now I have to decide. Buck wheat? Purple hull peas? Egyptian spinach (is it too late for that? I never got it started.

BTW the basket, leaves and all weighed 30 pounds.

Awesome Amy. About how many did you harvest?
I learned a lot about onions this year. my bed I mulched the onions got bigger faster and they are not done yet. A few have broke over but the majority are still growing. I am pulling the soft necks and sprinkling daily to keep the topsoil loose, since someone accidentally pulled the mulch with the weeds the soil is drying crusty. I will definitely use a lot more mulch next year. and I will not plant in 4 foot bed. I am going to try long single rows next year.

I didn't count them, and since it is supposed to rain they are in the garage with a fan blowing. I left about a dozen white ones in the bed to see what they would do.

Great harvest! I pulled a few, today, along with some garlic. Some of my garlic is probably okay. Time will tell. I'm always happy to harvest onions (my 2nd year) because it's SO important. Last year they were small ones, but a bunch and every one got cooked.

I have a handful that could be used as sets. My garlic did great, Bon, even some that looked spindly ended up with not too small a bulb. I still have about a dozen garlic plants in the ground because I want bulbils from the scapes. I suspect I should have grown twice as many onions in order to have enough for a year, but you do what you can.

Btw, my garlic was store-bought garlic - the mild popular kind and also elephant garlic. Did swell.

I did store bought garlic last year. Much of my harvest this year was from cloves saved from that first harvest, and the bulbs are bigger than the ones I bought. I was pleased.

Nearing that time again. My onion harvest is puny this year.

blessings
bon

Bon, Y'all might have been too wet this year. I had that problem in 2015. There's only so much you can do---cannot control the weather! There's always the gardener's matra...."there's always next year". We all know next year could be worse, but we always expect it will be better.

Dawn

Bon--nice to see you!

I enjoyed the onion discussion--thanks! Nothing to say. . . mine are still growing, some looking nice and big. One thing I know--gotta plant more onions next year!

Hugs yall

Had huge harvest last year. Mostly med size onions. Was wet last year at this time too. Felt good to understand pulling the softer necks and damaged onions before the coming rains. This harvest is mostly my fault by the beds I made. Too close together in the beds and the rows too. They were beat up by me and the weather. Hoops for "next year" (grin)

I have learned the hard way not to plant them too closely or they stay small. These are the lessons gardening teaches us all, and we learn them well. Nothing teaches us better than real-life, hands-on experience. I learn better lessons (that I never forget) from the garden disappointments than from the garden successes.

There's an upside to planting closely together---if you are space-challenged and your soil isn't in the shape you need for it to be in yet, you still get onions---just smaller ones, and you get them in the space available and the soil you have. There were years I planted using Square Foot Gardening type spacing to save space, and got much smaller onions. Since I need tons of onions for canning, that wasn't my best decision, so I switched to John Jeavons' type spacing, still biointensive and still a space saver, and got bigger onions though maybe still not as large as I like them to be.

I spread mine out properly this year, taking great care not to crowd them and it is just killing me that they totally fill up 5 of the smaller raised beds and half of one of the longer raised beds. That's the downside to using proper spacing---you look at all those rows of onions and think of everything else that could be growing there were the onions not there. I am sure that to a casual bypasser who sees the garden from the road, the thought likely has passed their mind that we are growing tons of onions this year. Really, it is less than usual---I think I planted the Dixondale short day sampler, intermediate day sampler, and one bundle each of Copra, Red River and White Highlander. That's only 5 bundles, but 9 varieties since some are samplers. Some years I've planted 7 to 9 bundles, but with closer spacing so they took up less space than these 5 bundles.

Every day I resist the urge to yank out a bed or two of onions prematurely and replace them with summer squash, winter squash, southern peas or okra......all plants that will eventually fill those spaces. I know I just need to be patient. Two of the three varieties in the Intermediate Day Sampler beds already are developing soft necks, so that bed and a half will be clear in a couple of weeks, and by then the Short Day types should be right behind them with the soft necks. Copra, Red River and Highlander have a long way to go, time-wise, but size-wise they already are in the 12-15 leaf range, so they basically have stopped putting out new leaves since they're maxed out.

Reading this old thread just reminds me how much I miss Larry!!!!!

You are already pulling onions? Mine are just starting to bulb. I planted intermediate day though, so that's probably the difference. They look good, 8-10 leaves on most of them.

I'm glad this thread popped back up. This is my first year in quite some time planting onions and I needed the refresher. I probably planned my onions closer than what you normally would due to space but that's ok for this year. I might expand next year. I am pleased with the growth though. I thought my soil might not allow the onions to grow very well. I need to stop watering them. One did lose it's top when my daughter was helping me plant other things. I need to pull it and hopefully I'm not too late.

I'm not sure why Bon pulled or is pulling her onions so early. Clearly she has detected issues with them. I think they're growing in a new place this year and she had tons of rainfall and some awful wind. She may be pulling them now in advance of this week's rainfall to save them from rotting.

Two out of three of my intermediate day length varieties are developing soft neck and falling over. They usually finish up ahead of the short days, which kinda makes me crazy, but it is what it is. Every year when it starts around the first or second week of May, I am in denial and freaked out. Then I remember that it always happens down here, roughly 80 days after I plant, and I calm down. They aren't ready 80 days after I plant, but that is when the first sign of soft necks begin to appear. It still takes another 2 weeks or so before they reach harvestability, or even longer. Still, for cooking, I pull them and use them fresh as needed. I'm not going to buy onions when I have a garden full of them.

The short day types I plant probably are late short day types and the intermediate day types I plant are early intermediates. It blurs the lines between short day and intermediate day length types when you start comparing the estimated DTMs of each variety. I still am not really used to the intermediates maturing before the short days, but it happens every year. The long-daylength types I grow won't mature until somewhere between late June and early July, but most of them already have about as many leaves (12-15) as I ever see on any bulbing onion here, so I don't expect much more growth from them---we'll just be keeping them happy until their necks begin falling over. Everything---not just onions but other cool-season crops---are fast and early this year, likely due to a severe lack of actual cold weather.

Some people on the OK gardening facebook pages are harvesting onions and posting photos of their onions, and clearly the onions are not mature yet---they still have big, thick necks, no soft neck, and bulbs that could have gotten so much larger than they already were if only the gardener had left them in the ground a bit longer. I've been struggling to find a way to politely ask those folks if (a) they know what they are doing, (b) realize that they are harvesting too early, and (c) understand that by harvesting too early, they are getting smaller onions as well as onions that won't store for long. Not really having found a polite way to ask those questions, I've just mostly scrolled past the photos of "onion harvests" and ignored them. I'm just not going to lie and say "What a great harvest!" when I know it is an incorrect harvest, if you know what I mean. Yesterday someone finally asked how to tell when/if their onions were ready for harvest, and Bruce and I both tried to answer that one correctly, and I hope other folks who are thinking about harvesting read our responses and understand that they need to wait, and not to follow the lead of the early harvesters who are harvesting too early/improperly. It is really easy for inexperienced gardeners to lead other inexperienced gardeners astray.

I understand that some folks may make a specific decision to harvest early for a certain reason---like maybe they are space-challenged and eager to get a succession crop in the ground now before the weather gets too hot. Still, I don't want for photos of improperly harvested onions to lead other new gardeners astray. For anyone who planted their onions at the proper time for Oklahoma, there's no way their onions are already truly mature. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to combine the recommended planting dates, DTMs of varieties grown here, and daylength at the present time and conclude it is too early----it just takes common sense. Could someone have planted a month or two early and already have mature onions? Perhaps, but if so, none of the early onion harvest photos I've seen have shown mature onions---they're all immature with large necks still visible. I feel like the folks who've accidentally harvested too early will see the error of their ways when their onions begin rotting or resprouting fairly quickly, as immature onions are prone to do. So, in that sense, it will be a great learning experience for them and will (hopefully) help them learn to avoid pulling their onions too early next year.

Dawn

On the subject of onions. Some observations today as I was weeding the onion bed. Many--maybe close to half of my Texas Legends aren't making it. They never bulbed up much and never made many leaves and are all just brown now. The bundle sent to me was different from last year. The onions were sorta on the biggish side. HOWEVER, the Red Creoles are looking fine. Maybe one or two aren't doing well. Maybe. Has anyone else had this problem with Texas Legend? Maybe I should try another variety. I will expand my onion bed next year so I can add a third bundle. It seems a little early to be planning for next year, but what varieties are y'all's favorites?

Another thing. I didn't use Dixondale fertilizer this year, other than once. I used another fertilizer (that I can't think of right now) and fish emulsion. BUT, it's probably that specific bundle of Texas Legend and not the fertilizer used. At least that is what my gut is telling me.

@osuengineer

"Nearing that time again. My onion harvest is puny this year."

I only pulled the damaged, weak and bolting onions. I'll chop and freeze. The remaining looks pathetic. More room might help. Not enough sun this year. Forecast for 7 more days of rain (and more?). On the flip side, I have very happy potato plants.

You guys are killing me. I don't have any idea what kind I grew--got them from Walmart in Jan, planted them by Jan 31. Some white ones and some red ones. Planted them as I was memorizing what you were telling me to do (mostly Dawn). Of course right after that, I'm seeing all this Dixondale stuff. . .

and now I'm trying to figure out how you know they are puny, Bon. I have no idea what mine are doing--they're still underground! I planted 100, and have been thinning them out in the past month, as I had planted them so closely together. I've been pulling the littlest-looking ones for green onions. . . and those have had 1-2" bulbs. I see many in there that are looking pretty big, many with thick stalks and many leaves. So. My expectations are low but am liking what I'm seeing. I kind of am getting a kick out of how ignorant I am/was, frankly! Like I said, all I know is I want to plant a lot more this next year! And of course, will order from Dixondale! LOL

You CAN get Dixondale in the stores. Carmichael's in Bixby has a good selection. The better nurseries carry them. This is the first year I ordered direct. However, Carmichael's didn't get them this year until about the time I got mine in the mail. I'm not sure Dixondale will mail them out as early as Jan. I think mine came the second week of Feb. The advantage to ordering them is they are not old and dried out like the ones in the stores sometimes are. I'm afraid this rain tonight will have blown mine over. I have a little square expanded metal patio table, which has an umbrella in a stand under it. It is leaning against the grill. The wind blew it over.

Bon, So, the onions are too shaded....I hope you have a different spot you can plant them next year.

Hazel, I normally do not have any more trouble with Texas Legend than with any other variety, so I don't think you're seeing an issue specific to that variety. If you've had the flooding rains that so many in your part of the state have experienced, that could be the problem. Some onions, depending on their size and root development when the heavy rain hits, just don't tolerate being too wet.

My favorite onions are Copra, Red River and Highlander because they store for months or months, although some years (not the real rainy ones) Red Creole can store for a very long time. Apart from those, I like Superstar, Texas Supersweet (aka TX1015Y) and Candy but, really, I like lots of different varieties. I like to grow Dixondale's short day sampler and intermediate day sampler because that gives me 6 varieties from just 2 bundles, and then I grow a bundle each of the three long-keeping types. Most of the short day and intermediate day onions end up in salsa or bread-and-butter pickles, and then I use the Copra, Red River and Highlander as needed to finish the canning, and use the rest of them for fresh eating.

Nancy, When you order directly from Dixondale, the onions are pulled no more than 24-48 hours before they are shipped, so the plants are green and fresh and haven't even had time to dry out. I like to try to get them in the ground as soon as possible after they arrive. To me, it is worth the extra expense of ordering to get high-quality transplants, as I have found high-quality transplants tend to produce high-quality harvests as long as the weather halfway cooperates.

Onions must be planted shallowly in order to get the best results. They can fail to bulb up well if planted too deeply. As they bulb up, the onions literally start popping up out of the ground, assuming they weren't planted too deeply. They are still rooted into the ground and still enlarging, but they are emerging from the ground bit by bit. I find this more noticeable with the intermediate daylength and long daylength types than with the short daylength types. At some point in their development, as they near maturity, the onions will look like you've already pulled them and set them on top of the ground but, nope, you haven't---they do it by themselves. I find that fascinating.

Dixondale ships short daylength types beginning in November, and intermediate daylength types beginning in December. When you are ordering, if you input your zip code into the slot for it, they'll tell you when they will ship your onions, based on the recommended planting time for your location. You may, if you choose, override their recommended shipping date, but I normally do not. For me, the recommended shipping date/arrive date is usually around Feb 10-14.

If I could find Dixondale onions in a store near me, I wouldn't have to order online, but I can't, so I order online. We used to buy them in local nurseries in Texas when I was a kid growing up, so they are a very long-time family tradition for us, though I don't think any of those small, local nurseries where we shopped have survived from the 1960s/1970s until now. Most stores here now carry onions from Bonnie Plants (which, for all we know, might buy theirs from Dixondale....who can say?).

Amy, When the rain storms arrived here around 3 a.m., we had wind gusting into the 60s (as high as 63 mph at our Mesonet station) and some wind damage. My Graham Thomas rose bush was snapped off just above the ground. The onions? They were fine.

Dawn

Yeah, my onions are fine too. Still very thick necked, so they're holding up to the wind. Where the heck did all the weeds come from, though? Sorry about your rose.

I'm glad the strong winds didn't get them. Thanks, the rose thing is crazy. I think it is broken above the graft, so ought to come back. If it doesn't, I doubt I'll replace it. The chances of bringing in RRD are too great.

The weeds? I am convinced that the weed seeds fall with the rain. Nothing else makes sense. I've been weeding the front garden at least twice a week from one end to the other. At the end of the first weeding session it looks so good and I feel like I really accomplished something. Then, about 4 days later, there's a whole new crop of weeds. Partly it is a deficiency of mulch--since we use grass clippings, we have to have actual grass to cut---and haven't had enough rain the last month or 6 weeks to really grow much grass. I need for it to rain so our pastures can produce more mulch.

We got paged out to a fire about an hour ago. I knew it couldn't really be real, could it? Maybe an arcing power line in this wind could spark a fire but it seemed unlikely just basically 10-12 hours after rain. Sure enough, it was trees on fire....because someone was burning brush and failed to call Dispatch and let them know they were burning a brush pile. Naturally, someone driving by saw fire and called 9-1-1.

We got hot here today, but only 89 degrees and it doesn't feel so bad....because our relative humidity is 23%, or was the last time I checked, giving us a heat index of only 85, We are having the strangest May.

Well the necks break over of course but to truly answer the question? How do you know when an onion is ready?

When you are out on the back deck grilling that perfect hamburger patty, you know the one, it's the one with the melted cheddar sticking to the grates. Then your slapping some spicy brown mustard on a extra large bun and layering on the dill pickles........hmmmm........ many an immature or not quite ready onion has met its fate a might early right about at this point around my house. Yeppers that onion looks just about ready. Its kinda hard to explain exactly how I arrive at the conclusion, but I just have a knack like that. lol

LOL

I harvest whichever one I want to use when I need one---soft neck or not. lol. It doesn't require a special touch---just a gardener who needs an onion and is determined to not drive to the store and get one. I even harvest them in late March or early April to use as scallions. It is one reason I plant so many---so we can use them all along. I don't believe there is anything wrong with that, especially if you plant a lot of onions knowing you'll be using some all along as they continue to grow.

What is wrong is people harvesting too early because they do not know when to harvest, and they end up with half-sized onions that go bad in just a month or two. That's the kind of premature harvesting of the whole crop that we try to combat with good information here. People are free to harvest whenever they please, but I just want to be sure that if they are harvesting the entire crop as immature onions, they are at least aware of that.

It is the same thing with potatoes. If I want potatoes, I can go and dig some now. There's no reason to go to the grocery store and buy potatoes when we have perfectly fine (if not yet maximum sized) taters growing in the garden.

And, how about fried green tomatoes? If a person likes friend green tomatoes and has plants loaded with green tomatoes now, what's the harm in harvesting a few to fry up and eat in Spring? Fried green tomatoes aren't just for the tons of greenies hurriedly harvested as the first frost or killing freeze approaches in autumn.

We've eaten BOLT sandwiches (that's normal Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato sandwiches for most people, but with my onion-obsessed husband's addition of onions to the mix) for dinner the last two nights. I have enough sliced tomato left to have one for lunch tomorrow. The tomatoes were ripe, and the onions were at the soft neck stage last week. There's no point in going to the grocery store and buying anything we can harvest now from the garden. We already are starting to build meals around the garden harvest, which is my favorite way to eat. I look at the garden in the morning, see what can be harvested, add it to whatever was previously harvested and is sitting in the fridge or on the kitchen counter and plan our meals that way. Sometime in the next few days, a large harvest of early peppers, both hot and sweet, will make their way into the kitchen. I am so happy when the harvest is rolling in almost daily, but sometimes the first harvest is almost too big and I'm wondering how in the world we'll eat everything before more stuff is ready.

Shopping in the garden when you're cooking or preparing to cook is so much better than shopping at any grocery store.

Thats what I call fast food y'all. Run to the garden fast and grab what you need when you need it.

Kim, We call it that too! And, when we are eating something---let's say pizza, for example, that didn't come from the garden, we still joke about it. Tim will ask if the pizza is home-grown, and I'll reply that of course it is---I grew it on our pizza tree.

I've got produce piling up in both refrigerators so need to get busy blanching and freezing the excess, but I've been saving it for tomorrow's expected rainy day.

Dawn

Maybe my "problem" with the Texas Legend is just this specific bundle. They were really fat this year...or extremely skinny--like barely-there-skinny. I'm not unhappy with them. At least half are doing well...and my bundle was huge this year--at least 100.

Their problem isn't too much rain (at least not yet, we'll see what the rest of May brings us)...the Red Creoles are planted just 18 inches away from them, and like I mentioned before, all but maybe 1 or 2 are doing well.

What's y'all's experience with really fat onions? Fat when you plant them...not when they've finished up and ready for harvest.

As long as the fat onions have 5 or less leaves, they produce normal bulbs most of the time.

As long as the fat onions are smaller in diameter than a No. 2 pencil, they tend to produce normal bulbs most of the time. However, it all is dependent on the weather. It only takes about a week of really cold winter temperatures to make the fat onions go dormant during the cold, then start growing again when it warms up. When that happens, they (being biennial) perceive that they have started their second growing season when they start regrowing, so they do what biennials do in their second season---they begin to prepare to bloom. Then they bolt.

Most years, I pull the really fat ones out of the regular bundles and plant then 1" apart, intending to pull them and use them as scallions throughout the Spring. Usually that works well, since anything that is too large at planting time is likely to bolt anyway. That, though, depends on us having a week of cold weather after the onions go in the ground---and last year we didn't so all those onions I planted 1" apart to use as scallions never bolted and grew as big as they possibly could considering they were planted 1" apart to use as scallions.

This year I had a lot of big fat onions in my Dixondale bundles and was worried they would bolt and wouldn't make good onions. I wasn't mad at Dixondale though. They had a hot winter just like we did and I am sure it made their onions grow faster than nomal. Dixondale cannot control the weather any more than we gardeners can, so I just planted mine and hoped for the best. We never got that week of really cold weather, so they didn't bolt. Well, so far one onion has bolted and I see a second one trying, but out of the hundreds of onions we have, if only two bolt, that's a really good year here.

So, if they are fat when you plant them, they generally are fat when they bulb up and all is well---as long as they don't bolt.

If you are unhappy with the behavior of your onions, just feed them something with a lot of nitrogen. I have a friend who fertilizes them with either ammonia sulfate or ammonia nitrate---and his onions are gigantic and put mine to shame every year. I could do the same, but I don't want to put that much nitrogen in my soil. He does the same thing with corn.

My onions are barely growing, whether they started out big or small to begin with, but they all have 12-15 leaves so I do not see how I can complain. Their color is awful---between hail, strong wind, temperatures that keep hitting the 90s day after day, and a lack of rainfall, their size is certainly fine and their color isn't. I expect we'll get a huge harvest anyhow. I am not precisely sure why their color is so off this year, and I think that they look hungry, but I don't really think they are because I know the soil they're in and I know how rich it is. I didn't use the Dixondale fertilizer this year, but think I'll be sure to buy it and use it next year. There must be a micronutrient in it that is not present in our soil his year.

Dawn, you mentioned Larry--slowpoke gardener. I miss him too. Do you know what happened to him?

Hi Dorothy, I believe it was a combination of several things, and Soonergrandmom knows them better than I do. He had computer problems. I believe he has either a smartphone or tablet now instead of a computer but finds them frustrating to try to use. Then, his previous illness returned and he's been busy with that, and then Madge had a stroke, and he's been taking care of her. It is unfortunate that it all seemed to happen around the same time. I am not even sure if he still gardens but doesn't come here to talk about it, or if he gave up gardening to focus on his and Madge's health.

Dawn

My smaller yellow sweets that I pulled and set to dry are rotting or already completely rotted. The remainder of onions in the garden sized up after removal of some, but now most look to have what resembles thrip damage or bacterial issue. Color is weak. Might have downy mildew, too.

I don't see any black mold on any in the ground or out of the ground. Roots look good, so the issue is coming from above, I guess. Most all onions are toppled over. More rain coming.

Should pull what's left? Should I try to cure or better to freeze immediately?

bon

I don't know what to tell you. When my onions did that in May 2015 (24" of rain that month), there were not enough survivors to bother with, and most did rot while curing....that is, if they didn't rot while still in the ground. I suppose you could try freezing them. I'm not sure if it will help. Generally, in food preservation, you are not supposed to try to preserve food that has bacterial issues. I am not sure if that applies to freezing onions. You could ask on the Harvest Forum and get an answer from one of the food preservation experts over there.

Okay. I will do that.

Dawn

It's been my experience that the bigger the onions I get from Dixondale the bigger the onion will be when it bulbs. I maybe have 1 out of 100 that bolts. The smaller ones just don't get as big if they even make it. There are always more than 50 in a bunch, sometimes closer to 80 or 90, so I don't even bother to plant the tiniest ones. In the past those were always the first to die. I probably lost 20% of the plants I set out this year even though I made sure to plant them within a day or two of receiving them. I'm not sure what happened, they just shriveled up and died. It wasn't for lack of water or too much water.

However, the onions that survived are thriving and look great. They probably have 10 - 12 leaves and are on their way to making nice bulbs. I used to have so much trouble with onions, but I've got to say buying direct from Dixondale solved that problem.

Question

When I pull onions with those big beautiful tops do I HAVE to leave them on the onion until the onion cures?

Can I cut them off and use them and let the rest of onion cure?

OSUEngineer, I generally have the same experience except when the weather is wildly fluctuating from too hot to too cold weekly. When that happens, often the bigger ones bolt. It is that whole biennial thing that happens once they're a certain size and then exposed to a week of very cold weather. It really doesn't happen that often though. The smallest ones usually aren't worth planting---I mean the really tiny ones. I usually just drop them into the path to blend in with the mulch. I like the medium-sized plants since they are the easiest to keep happy, but this year even th great big ones stayed happy. You know, if the onions are happy, I'm happy.

Since we haven't had that erratic weather down here this year, our onions are way ahead of their usual schedule. It is sort of astonishing to see what happens when the onions haven't had to deal with much cold weather at all since they were planted. I rarely have had onions reach the 15-16 leaf stage in May, when they reach it at all, and this year all the larger ones just about have hit that point. I feel like I walk through a forest of onions every day, but I'm not complaining.

I'm so glad to hear that buying direct from Dixondale is working out so well for you. It was a gentleman from Texas, now deceased, who used to post here on GW as GoneFishin' who convinced me to try ordering from Dixondale many years ago. He always had the most beautiful onions and so I decided to try ordering direct to see if I could get onions as nice as his. I think maybe this year I finally have onions as big and as happy and as healthy as his always were, but it has taken me the better part of 2 decades to get there. See how nice it can be when the weather cooperates?

When a few of mine have died like yours did, I always assume they might have had a disease or got too dried out after being pulled or whatever. It happens. I think Dixondale overpacks to account for that.

Kim, Normally, if you cut off the necks instead of curing the onions properly, the onions will not store as well, but much depends on the varieties too. With all the sweet southern type varieties (most short day and intermediate day length types fall in this category), they really don't store for a real long time anyway so it might not hurt to cut off their leaves. Would I do it? No. But, these are your onions and you're the Queen of your garden so you should feel free to do whatever you choose.

To understand why curing them with the leaves on is important, I'll just say that as the onions cure, the necks dry and shrink down. During this process the onion skins/wrappers are drying and sort of shriveling and pulling tight. Allowing this to happen naturally takes a while but is important---there's more to gardening than just the growing---you want to maximize your harvest's usage via proper curing and storing. The wrappers/scales/skins (whatever you choose to call them) will help protect the onions in storage. If you cut off the leaves before the drying process finishes up, the skins may not dry properly and pull tight to protect the onions from bacteria. Normally, once the skins pull tight and dry out, then you can cut the leaves off about 1" above the bulb. The reason you don't cut closer is because cutting too close can allow bacteria to infiltrate. If you prefer and if your leaves have dried down really well without getting mildew or fungi or anything, you can braid the onions together like you do with garlic.

With storage onions (generally the long day length types and a few of the intermediate types), it is very important to let them cure properly. If cured properly they can last in storage from 4 to 10 months, which is just awesome. Imagine never having to buy an onion at the grocery store all year. Cutting off the leaves too early without curing properly could interfere in the curing process and cause them to sprout really early instead of storing for months. So, weigh your options.

If you're wanting to cut some to use the greens, try it with a few and see how they store and then you can determine if you want to try it with more of them. The best way to learn is to experiment to see what works for you in your particular conditions and circumstances.

I learned how important proper curing was early in my adult gardening life by not curing properly----that is why I feel like it is so important. When I slowed down and stopped being so impatient and allowed them to cure properly on their schedule as they needed instead of on/by my schedule, my storage time of all varieties pretty much doubled. For me, there was a huge lesson in that.

You know, I helped my dad all the time when I was a kid--toddler-sized, really, through young adulthood and I never really thought much about what he did or how he did it. I just did things the way he'd shown me or told me and that was that. I didn't question his methods. They worked. I might not have understood why they worked, but I knew they did. Later on, as an adult with my own garden and with Alzheimer's Disease stealing his mind, I wish I previously had asked a lot more questions and written down his answers while he still could provide those answers. By the time I wanted/needed to ask questions to learn why we did things a certain way, he no longer could answer those questions. It took me another 10 years on my own to develop a good understanding of it all---not so much an understanding of what he did, but of why he did it and why it mattered and why I needed to do it too. I always try to explain the why's when I can because he didn't explain them to me and that caused me, eventually, to have a much longer learning curve.

Dawn

Again, thanks for the advice.

These are onions for sale not storing so I may cut all the tips about 4 inches up so I can dehydrate the tops.

I know it's better to pull onions BEFORE it rains, but I have a few that probably are ready, but got about 3/8" of rain last night. Better to leave them to dry out a little or pull them now?

Nancy, You're welcome.

Kim, Since you're going to sell them (and sell them soon), it probably doesn't matter if you cut back the leaves.

Amy, If they're ready, they're ready. If the necks have softened and the leaves are flopped over on the ground, they're ready. At this point, since it already rained and they are wet, I am not sure it matters if you let them dry for a few days first before pulling them or pull them and then dry/cure them. Well, it matters if a lot more rain is in your forecast or if your ground is staying overly wet. What matters most for quality and the longest storage possible is that they are at the soft neck stage and that they are cured/dried properly.

It normally takes 2-4 weeks for onions to cure properly, depending on what the weather is like. Once I start curing onions in successive harvests in late May, I normally have some onions curing for the next couple of months. It takes forever to cure all of them, and sometimes the very minute I cut off the dried, brown, shriveled leaves of the cured ones and put a bunch of onions into storage, then there's a whole new batch to pull and cure before I can store them. And, by then, there's a whole new batch with soft necks ready to be pulled. It is like an onion merry-go-round that just keeps going and going and going.

Dawn

That is exactly how the onion field feels. A merry go round, may not be as merry towards the end. I have been pulling onions as they bolt but now some are getting soft necks so when I went out to the onions forever space I was shocked to see so many bolting and falling. Its like they talk to each other "hey she has her back to us ok now fall over". I gave up last night at 100. Tomorrow I will pick up where I left off.

Kim, I feel the same way. Every day I pull the fallen necks and spread them out on a table at the shady end of the garden to dry for a few hours before I take them up to the spare room to cure. I always feel so good---like I accomplished something tangible that I can see....like, yes, that's progress, right? Then, the next morning, there's more soft necks and the bed looks pretty much the same way it did the day before, so it is like I didn't make any progress at all. I think it is a onion conspiracy to keep us on our toes. I wish they'd all do it at once, but they don't. Some days it is hard to be patient.....I look at a slowly-emptying onion bed and think it would be nice to just clear it out, replant it with something else and be done with it. But, I don't. I wait for nature to take its course no matter how aggravated it leaves me in the meantime.

Bed 1 (intermediate daylength types) is now more than half empty and Bed 2 (short daylength types) appears to be getting the very start of its first soft necks. We'll see if Bed 2 gets its act together and if all those onions can fall over (like synchronized swimmers) all at once to make life easier. Of course, they won't do that. Who am I kidding? The onions are almost like Chinese water torture....drip, drip, drip.....In Bed 2, it appears the white onions are the largest so probably their necks will go first since they seem quite a bit ahead of the yellows and reds. I'm also not sure what is going on with Bed 4 because there's no soft necks there even though it is a blend of leftover onions from Beds 1, 2, 3 and 5....so there ought to be at least some short and intermediate types in it. Bed 3 is Copra so has a long way to go still---at least another month I expect---but Bed 5 is Red River and Highlander, both also long day types, and the Red River ones are bulbing up really quickly now. I try not to think about all their DTMs and daylengths and the way the intermediate types beat the short day types or it would drive me nuts. It is a good thing I am content to let them just do their own thing because if I expected the beds to mature in order...short days first, intermediates second, long days last, etc., it would drive me crazy that they don't. Our daylength is now well above 14 hours, so all of them have enough daylength now and likely just need to reach their estimated DTMs.

But, after two years of monumental rainfall and rotting onions, I'm just happy to have happy, healthy onions this year so I'm really not complaining. There's worse things in life than starting out each day pulling all the softnecked onions.

Dawn

It is a blessed predicament. I probably will rip 2 rows out this week I want sweet potatoes to go in there. I get the same price for medium and large onions at market so it's Ok.

I was pretty sure there was a movie about onion fields, but, when I googled it, it wasn't as nice as I'd hoped. It is about the kidnapping of 2 LA cops in 1963 and the murder of one of them in an onion field near Bakersfield. Maybe we should write a muppet movie where the muppets play onions that wait till you're not looking to fall over.

Kim, That's true. I'd rather be anxiously waiting for the onions to hurry up, finish up and get out of my way than moping around because we aren't going to have a good onion harvest. It is so nice to be cooking with fresh onions again. Growing for market is different than trying to grow and put up a year's worth of onions for personal consumption. If I was a market grower, I'm sure I'd be harvesting the medium and large ones for the opening weekend of the market too!

Amy, I remember reading the book "The Onion Fields" by Joseph Wambaugh decades ago. I don't remember much about it, so I probably was pretty young when I read it. I don't remember watching the movie. I think I tried, but didn't care for it so didn't watch it.

You write the movie, direct and produce it, and we'll watch it. A garden full of onion muppets could be interesting.

Dawn