How to Harvest and Dry Onions

Jul 8

Jul 8 How to Harvest and Dry Onions

My father farmed onions for a season in Bakersfield, California to help his uncle. It was a good experience for them since the Texas crop failed and their onions brought a premium price. With his share of the profit my parents built their first home in Laguna Beach in 1948.

My father’s mother assisted the same farmer in his Oregon onion fields other years, pulling weeds when she wasn’t caring for an elderly friend. My sister lives near the property in Sherwood and the onion drying barn was still standing the last time I was there.

So there are onions in my lineage. But I must admit to being a lazy onion grower. I don’t usually start them from seed, choosing the easy way with onion sets. I especially like red onions so I buy a pound of the sets and push them into the prepared soil, usually next to the carrots. I also interplant them with brassica crops for an early green onion harvest.

The onion sets go in the ground in the fall about two inches apart. I pull them as needed at “scallion size.” Growth slows over the winter and with longer days I have “spring onions.” Then as days lengthen, the bulbs grow in size. I pull them for kitchen uses but they’re often growing too close together for proper bulb formation.

I was particularly neglectful this spring. The onions produced blooms earlier than usual and I didn’t deal with them. Most experts I read suggest harvesting the onions when the blooms appear. I didn’t.

I thought the onion flowers would work well—like white fireworks—in a Fourth of July bouquet. Good for the bouquet but not for the bulb onions.

Finally, this week I pulled the onions for drying as I needed the space for other crops. The bulbs were not large or particularly well-formed. Likely, they will not store well. They were not my father’s onions.

Avoid my mistakes and read two excellent short articles on growing, harvesting and drying onions. I should have been reading them earlier in the season.