Storing onions.

[retropants]

he he! agreed

[PLUMPUDDING]

I agree, people often decide they don't like something without even tasting it. I made a dahlia tuber rosti last year and everyone thought it was lovely, but I bet they wouldn't have tried it if they had known what it was.

[Primrose]

Gosh that's unusual. i've never heard of dahlia tubers being eaten before but as I believe I may have mentioned on here previously I have read they ate tulip bulbs in Holland during the occupation in WW2 because of the shortage of food. I will tell the three miserable dahlia plants in my border to buck up their ideas or a similar fate will await them. Out of interest do they have any specific flavour ?

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Primrose, probably a little "flowery".....sorry....

[robo]

I have read before that dahlias are edable but never tried them

[Geoff]

I loosen them in the usual way then fully dig them up and let them start drying where they are. I have chicken wire that I stretch across the top of my compost heaps as a drying rack. I sort them as I pick them up and leave the "use first" ones on the ground. On rainy days like today I cover them up with a sheet of cloche polythene and weigh it down with cold frame lids then when the sun comes back I uncover them. When they are thoroughly dry I tidy them up and cut off the roots, without cutting the basal plate, and string them up on a single string. Here they are covered and uncovered and some strung in 2010.

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[Bren]

going back to a tread in July on dahlia 's, see what Alan Refail had to say about them

[sally wright]

Dear All,
a tip for drying out onions which have thick necks is to cut off the foliage about 1-2 inches away from the bulb and then put them on a wire netting rack upside down so any surplus moisture has a chance to drain away as the skins dry out. This will prolong their storage life somewhat but they will still not store as long as thin necked onions.
The prevention of thick necks is down to not giving the onions much nitrogen. to this end I use rose food to fertilise onions instead of growmore as it has less nitrogen.

[FelixLeiter]

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 ?(

The dry foliage should pull off cleanly. But it's not important to remove it. I leave it on for stringing, which makes the job a bit easier.
I've not encountered thick necks on onions, which seems to have been a point of discussion so far. I don't bend over the tops of onions when they are mature, as is the received wisdom, to hasten ripening. This is an ill-advised practice since it damages the still-healthy tissues in the neck of the bulb so that it cannot continue to develop properly, and a natural "pinching-off" of the top of the bulb cannot occur. Bulbs treated this way certainly do not store well. This may not be the reason for thick necks but it's worth consideration.

[Ricard with an H]

I've not encountered thick necks on onions, which seems to have been a point of discussion so far.

Thats interesting Felix, I have done a lot of reading on the subject of dealing with onions. "A-lot" in my case doesn't mean days of research, rather the odd half hour whilst my attention-span is healthy.

When onions bolt you end up with a thick neck and it's why Sally pointed out that they used to immediately segregate any thick necks and to use those onions first. If you haven't come across thick necks perhaps you are are growing onions that are less likely to bolt or you are clever enough to stop them bolting. "Do not bolt" is a claim made by some of the seed merchants for some varieties of their onions.

I had a few 'bolters' of both types last year when I grew both red and white though I'm not entirely sure of the type of onions I grew.

I'm fairly sure I had a similar thing going on with some garlic bulbs this year.