Kitchen Garden Forum

Sounds like a gardener's expletive!

Some of my overwintered onions have started keeling over and on examination their roots have gone brown and some have almost disappeared. There is some evidence of white mouldy patches but only on a couple of them. I don't think it's white rot as my book says that happens after a 'long, dry summer'. Could it simply be that they've sat in semi-waterlogged soil for months (we're very low here in the fens and the water table has kept rising above the surface every time we get heavy rain) and are now thoroughly fed up and want to be taken indoors? Any advice welcome.
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Granny

Dear Granny, i should think you are right about the problem with your onions, being to do with the wet conditions.
I would be tempted to chuck the worst, unless you can use them straight away, and get the others dried off, if they are large enough to harvest.
Autumn grown onions don't store for very long anyway, so it might pay to get making onion soup.

Granny

If you have onions that are starting to go mouldy, cut out the good bits, chop them up and then sweat them down in a pan. Once soft, bag them up and freeze them.

Thanks for your replies. Nothing has happened to the rest so far so I'll keep my fingers crossed. Won't have any problem getting through the ones I've had to pull up although it's worth knowing you can freeze them.
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Granny

I have a few that need to be used very quickly also but would like advice on what is the best thing to use when sweating the onions off before freezing - oil or butter??

Or is it just down to personal taste?