Storing onions.

[Ricard with an H]

I've done enough research and had a little experience though I was confounded by what I found when I dug up the first bed I used for onions to sow grazing rye.

That bed produced a lot of white-rot so I didn't use it the following year or this year, when I was digging and turning the earth over I found healthy red onions that hadn't grown larger than golf ball size but they were solid.

I'm sorting my red onions out that have been stored in hessian sacks indoors after a few days outside in the warm sun. It's the buggers that went to seed that start rotting at the stem that I should have thrown out or at least segregated.

One bit of information I couldn't find was what do you do about the dry foliage ? I left it on so-far, the few I used I cut the foliage off at the bulb but it seemed all-wrong. When you buy professionally grown onions they seem to have dried and fallen off at the bulb so do I leave the dried foliage on until it falls of naturally ?

Nice lump of cheese and bread tonight with chunks of Red-Barron, I could eat them like apples but I rarely have to kiss anyone.

[Primrose]

In damp or wet weather it's sometimes difficult to leave your onions until the foliage has complete dried up but I find if you don,t get them either sun baked or dried to this stage under cover it can cause the bulbs to start rotting so I always get them to this stage somehow before storing them in hessian bags. Ironically I find that any stray ones which get left behind in the soil, even through the winter, seem to survive in a hard state until the spring when I occasionally unearth them again when I start digging!

[Ricard with an H]

Ironically I find that any stray ones which get left behind in the soil, even through the winter, seem to survive in a hard state until the spring when I occasionally unearth them again when I start digging!

I had wondered about the importance of drying quickly, some summers won't lend themselves to outside drying and even though this summer has lent itself to outside drying I bought them in quickly before the showers though should have taken them out again.

The only failures so-far are the ones that went to seed and should have been segregated, I have eaten one tonight. Just remove the rotted stalk and centre.

Waste-not, want-not was drilled into me at an early age though I stopped darning socks twenty years ago.

[Beryl]

A very valuable piece of advice I was given when I started on the allotment many moons ago was only store onions with thin necks what ever their size and use any others first as they won't keep.

If I can't finish drying them on the allotment I bring them home and put them in the greenhouse.

A good way to store them is to take a strong piece of string about a meter long, knot the ends together, hang it on a nail or hook somewhere where it will take the weight, tie a large onion on the bottom, looping it in a figure of eight, add more onions, looping each one and trimming any excess until the string is about 2 thirds full. Hang in a light airy shed or garage. Checking them occasionally throughout the winter for any that might be rotting.

Autumn sown onions usually keep until about Christmas but main crop if dried and stored well should keep at least till the following April/May.

Beryl.

PS you can see how I do it on my website. http://www.saundersallotment.co.uk/September.html

[Ricard with an H]

Thanks Beryl.

I bagged mine up far to early so first job tomorrow is to tip them all out to get the fat necks out first then I'll give them some more outside drying time.

This growing your own lark is easy, isn't it ?

Always something around the corner waiting to trip you up.

[robo]

I dried mine in the greenhouse then used the dried stems to tie them in bundles before hanging in the garage come dump room I keep checking them they look o.k.

[Ricard with an H]

A good job done just in time, I tipped two sacks (Coffee sacks) of onions on the store floor and found a dozen fat necks, a few were already going soft at the neck/bulb junction.

I couldn't be bothered to plait them this year so they were bundled and tied together with a zip-tie. I know, not very wholesome by the standards of you people who wander around in hand-crafted underwear and corduroy pants.

As robo points out, if they are hung up you can easily check them for dodgy ones, the fat necks will go to neighbours who consume a little faster than I do.

I won't grow onions or garlic next year, of-course that would start about now for over-winter onion and garlic. I have other things going on and every year I seem to plan another raised bed.

My garage/store/shed which is a recently built structure usually stinks of garlic and onion, nearly always one of them is going-off.

What an excellent summer, French climbing beans for Septober. I knew it was a risk though lots of those little white flowers are turning into bean-lets.

Sorry to digress.

[peter]

Richard. Onion soup?

[Primrose]

Yes, French ònion soup with some grated cheese on top and some crusty bread is a meal In itself. Don,t give those onions away!!

I too am wondering about growing onions next year. With limited growing space It,s more sensible for me to concentrate on more expensive crops..

[Ricard with an H]

With limited growing space It,s more sensible for me to concentrate on more expensive crops..

Garlic I buy round here isn't nearly as good as what I grow but onions ? I can buy red or white and pick and choose, and can I be comfortable thinking no one needs to use chemicals to grow onions ?

Even garlic is a bit of a nuisance if you're short of space, they stay in the ground just that little bit too long. In-fact, I'm lifting both whilst they are still green just to make some space.

Onion soup is something I always wanted to make but I do have a lot of onions for one bloke. Lovely lady won't eat onions even though she'll use them is cooking. But never enough, same with garlic. When she's disipeared for a few minutes I put extra garlic in.

[Primrose]

My dad always swore he was allergic to onions and couldn't eat them yet whenever I cooked meals, especially casseroles for my parents in their later years, I swamped them with onions (and garlic) and he woolfed everything up declaring it delicious. And my mother would be spitting blood because all those years she'd been cooking meals without them at his insistence and having to eat tasteless food.

I often wonder how many of these so called food allergies and aversions are merely psychological.remnants of childish fads.
When we got married my husband refused point blank to eat swede because his mother boiled and mashed it to death. When I cooked it for myself for the first time in slices, dressed with a knob of butter and black pepper, he didn't recognise it, enquired what it was and asked to try it. He loved it and couldn't believe it was the same vegetable. When his mum came to Sunday lunch one day and I served it like that amongst other vegetables, she was speechless to see my husband eating it. "But he doesn't eat swede" she declared. "Well he does now" I replied , which was probably my first mistake as a new daughter-in-law

[retropants]

i had to buy some garlic form the supermarket, as mine was so bad this year. I have to say that I have now ruined several jars of homemade pasta sauce as the shop garlic tastes so awful. it has a nasty chemical taste to it. So, I have now bought some from the garlic farm (which is where I get my seed garlic from) and that tastes delicious. It is an expensive way to do it, but the supermarkert stuff was bloody awful. Must find a farmers market somewhere!

[Ricard with an H]

I have similar eating-disorder problems with my lovely and I daren't suggest her various aversions are a result of her mothers influence. I daren't not because I'm a coward, she lost her mother when was a young girl and the loss still hurts so I go-along with the problems or her poor diet by occasional encouragement rather than dragooning her into a sensible diet.

I just remembered an exception and there are a few, following a 'Jamie' recipe for roast lamb shoulder I pleased to see two whole bulbs of garlic tucked all around the meat.

She won't touch mint and didn't like tarragon until she discovered it in the soups I made. Soup is the way I get her to eat what little vegetable she eats.

It's slowly getting better though I'll be resting and at peace by the time she gets to enjoy a little kale or cabbage. Oh-yes, she eats broccoli, sprouts and cauli so it's not all bad, but all since we've been together and all with a level of trepidation.

[retropants]

my dh has started eating more vegetables since I have been cooking for him! he now eats broccoli, runner beans, peas (begrudgingly) cabbage - only wth garlic, and olives. more surprisingly he has recently started eating red peppers, only cooked, he previously loathed them, and so I had to either chop them so big he could pick them out, or so small he didn't know it was there! for some reason he has decided that they are 'OK' ! (I love them )

[Ricard with an H]

It's good to share these problems.

When we do new potatoes I like mine with either mint or parsley hers have to be plain. A few years back when she wouldn't have considered garlic with roast potatoes my eldest daughter cooked a traditional roast dinner for the whole family, the roast potatoes were done with lots of garlic chunks which disappear though leave their flavour. Some time later I'm told how lovely those roast potatoes were.

Sometimes it's good to be sneaky.