Harvesting Onions

When are the onions ready to harvest? That's something I asked the first year we grew onions a few years ago. All the books are full of information on how to plant and care for the onions, but nowhere could I find details on when to pick them. Lots of expert gardeners forget how little we know as total beginners and so I promised myself I'd write a post on the topic.

The harvesting will depend on the variety you are growing, the soil in your plot, the amount of sun and shading on the plants and of course the weather. What I'm saying is that you can't say they'll be ready to harvest after a specific number of weeks after planting. It's more a case of watching and observing your vegetable garden, which is all part of the fun. There are some years onions will do well, and then others when they'll seem to have hardly grown since putting the sets in the ground.

Once the little bulbs are set in the soil they will throw up tall green hollow stalk like leaves. Weeds need to be kept at bay. The onion plants will become quite lush and there's nothing quite so fulfilling as a bed full of healthy onions reaching up towards the sky. Keep visiting your onions and cast an eye over them every few days. If you see any flowering stalks shoot up from the odd onion harvest and use those ones immediately, they won't grow anymore and they don't store either.  It's always nice to leave one or two, as the flowers are beautiful and the kids are interested in what happens if they're left to grow on.

These onions are drying out under a shelter, they will need turning every day to prevent the green shoots rotting,
or even better, space them out further than this.

After roughly three or four months you'll begin to notice a change in the lush miniature green forest. Some of the leafy stalks will begin to lie down, just a couple at first, but after a day or two most of the crop will be lying down and are ready to harvest. If you are lucky enough to have sunny dry weather leave the crop out in the sunshine a day or two for the leafy tops to shrivel and dry. Otherwise spread them out to indoors or under shelter. If you wish to try your hand at onion ropes leave roughly 10cm of stalk length on each onion for weaving it into a rope. Snip off the short roots. Store in net bags or hang the ropes.

If you'd like lots of information like this in one easy ebooklet take a look at the Grow Your Own Veg which is perfect for beginners. Or if you have time to spare, read through the blog for more free information, try clicking on 'Gardening, Fruit & Veg' under the Categories list.

Comments

[Robert]

You might be interested in seeing how Herrick Kimball, at Deliberate Agrarian, cures his garlic. I would guess you could do the same with onions. http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/08/curing-garlic-bulbs.html

[Lawn Care]

really informative post and great pic of those onions as well- there are so many! wow

[Paul in Georgia USA]

Bee update long overdue

I've enjoyed your previous

[Claire]

Hello, I've not commented much this season as I've been unwell and my garden has suffered. My scrappy veggies really aren't very inspiring this year. I've still been enjoying your blog though and feeling much more inspired by what you achieve.

Anyway, knowing how important bees are to veg growers I was wondering if you would be willing to possibly call by my duaghter's campaign site, (she's eight by the way), which she is hoping to use to help lobby MP's to spend money to investigate the decline of the honey bee. Any support you could give her and the bees by commenting or spreading the word about her site would be much appreciated. http://honeybeehero.blogspot.com/

Many thanks
Claire

[allotment blogger]

I had exactly the same question about overwintered onions, the first year I grew them. The laying down bit is crucial, and once that starts to happen, the wise gardener will watch the weather forecast for sunny days on which to harvest onions.

Our allotmenht site had an onion-growing competion this year and the winner was impressive!

[Furniture movers]

My aunt has a good harvest of her onions and we always asked her if how she was able to harvest a good and beautiful onions, she would just smile at us and will told us that it's just a matter of hard work and a lot of patience.