It's normal. If you plant them so deep that they don't pop up out of the ground as they enlarge, then you planted them too deeply and they won't bulb up well.

When you harvest them depends on what kind of onions they are.

Are you talking about big bulbing onions? You harvest them when the foliage turns yellow, tan or brown and falls over. If you watch, you'll see the neck weakening and softening over time, and then the tops fall over.

If you are talking about bunching onions that you use more like scallions, you harvest them whenever you want to use some.

How long it takes bulbing onions to mature depends on which variety you planted. Some short-day varieties can mature in 80-90 days, but some long-day types can take 110 days or longer.

Planting at the recommended time is important because different varieties bulb up and mature in response to day-length (the number of hours of sunlight in a day). If you plant any variety late, it still will mature on time when the daylength reaches the right amount, so it just will be smaller at maturity. I don't know if I said that well, so let me try again. If I plant short day onion varieties in mid-February, which is my recommended onion-planting date, they will be mature around mid-May and will be full-sized, barring some sort of odd weather. If I plant short day onion varieties in mid-April, they still will mature around mid-May when the daylength reaches the proper amount of hours for that variety, but the onions will be smaller because they only had a month to grow.

It is important to match day-length to your locale. Pretty much anyone in OK can grow intermediate day-length types, and most folks in OK can grow short-day types. Folks need to be pretty far north in OK to successfully grow long day-length types. I am pretty far south, so I grow both short-day and intermediate day, but the long day types generally won't bulb up for me so obviously I don't grow them.

Oh, and you can harvest and use an onion any time you wish. You don't have to wait and harvest all of them on the same day or during the same week. I begin to harvest some of them as green onions after they've been in the ground a month or so. If you want some of the onions for long-term storage, it is important to harvest those only after the necks have fallen over, and then to cure them to ensure the longest possible storage life.

Hope this helps.

Dawn

thanks so much dawn. will print this out for my husand.

dawn, my husband wants to know what the method is for curing the onions, especially in this humidity. and he thanks you.

Hi Jessaka,

We have a covered patio, and I have some folding tables I set up on the patio. Before we bought the tables, I used old window screens set up on sawhorses. I lay the onions in rows on the tables and let them air dry there in 100% shade. How long I let them cure depends on a lot of factors. In a wetter year when the onions seem extra-full of water and the air remains humid, I cure them for longer periods of time. In a hot, dry, drought year, they cure a lot more quickly.

I like curing them on the patio because it has good air flow and is fully shaded after about 9 a.m.

Other places I have cured them is on the covered porch, on the screened-in porch before we turned it into a glassed-in sun porch, on the sun porch, on tables in the garage, and in the potting shed with the doors and windows open for good air flow.

My grandfather had sandy soil and mostly dry weather, so he usually cured his in the field, pulling them out of the ground (and, as you may have noticed, they pop up so much as they enlarge that they almost are out of the ground while still growing) and lying them on the ground. The trick to doing that is to let the foliage of each onion lie on top of the onion next to it in order to shade the onion bulb so it won't sunscald. My dad had heavier clay soil and couldn't let his onions cure on the ground, so he would lay his onions on top of his garden shed roof and let the foliage shade the bulbs from the sun.

When you first pull the onions, the neck has weakened but there is still some green in the foliage and some moisture in the neck. One of the purposes of curing the onions is to let the bulbs sort of pull in the moisture and carbs from the onion neck. The neck gets progressively thinner and lighter until it is almost like dead grass. At that point, you know that the onion has cured.

If you are looking at the onions as they cure, you'll notice over a period of days that the onion scales (the layers of flesh) at the top of the onion slowly pull together until they are almost closed at the top of the bulb as the green foliage part dries down. That is important as it sort of seals the onions closed to keep bacteria out. I've always thought of it as a sort of magical process, and wonder to myself "how does it do that?"

Because y'all have had lots of moisture, it probably is especially important this year for the onions to have good air flow as they cure. Some years, I will plug in a fan and let it blow at a low speed on them all day every day for the first week.

Onions can cure in a week some years, and I've let them cure for up to 3 weeks in other years. The difference is the amount of water in the onion and the amount of humidity in the air. My onions usually mature in May (for short day types) and June (for intermediate day types) which are very humid months. I always err on the side of safety and cure them for a somewhat longer period of time than what is recommended. I figure it is better to be safe than sorry. Some years my storage onions only last until November or so before they start either sprouting or just collapsing in dry rot. Other years, I've had them last until December or January. One year (it might have been 2003 when we had less than 19" of rain so the onions cured extra well) they lasted until February. I can guess in any given year how long they will last, so I keep enough in dry storage to last through that period and I chop, slice and freeze the rest for cooking.

I'm going to link the Dixondale Farms website. Their onion growing guides are superb, and their explanation of the curing process is outstanding. Their monthly new letters always are chock full of info, and much of what I know about growing, curing and using onions has come from reading their thoughtful, well-written guides and newsletters and applying it to what I do. I'd grown onions for ages before I found Dixondale Farms, courtesy of a GW poster who posted under the name Gone Fishin'. After finding Dixondale Farms, I developed a much better understanding of what to do, how to do it and why.

If your husband has any more questions, feel free to ask.

The item from their website that I am linking is a newsletter from earlier in the year that addresses when to harvest and how to cure. There are great tips on curing in the newsletter's Q&A section at the end of the newsletter.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Dixondale Farms-Newsletter on Harvesting/Curing

Thanks so much Dawn. Went to that website. Looks like a good one.

This post was edited by jessaka on Thu, Aug 15, 13 at 14:21