Monday 17 August 2009

onion harvest


The cycle of the season turns and it is now time to lift onions planted in the spring.

A good harvest, especially of 'Sturon': our favourite white cooking onion. It makes nice round onions that we initially plant as sets and that store well into the new year.

Although the August weather has been warm, there have been some quite wet spells, so instead of leaving the onions to dry on the wet ground, we lifted them and left them to dry.

A week later and the onions had dried well and I was able to string them today. There is still some softness and greenness to some of the tops of the onions. I leave these to dry to a crisp and then trim with scissors to tidy them. If you cut the stems when still moist, there is a danger that rots can take hold and spoil the harvest.


2 comments:

Lisa said...

Rob,
It never fails to amaze me how different your gardening seasons are than mine.

I definitely need to consider what I need to do to store more of the harvest. (We ate all my fresh bulb onions long ago, I'm afraid, although we have plenty of garlic yet.)

Thanks for the inspiration (I mentioned you in a fall vegetable gardening class I taught yesterday as a garden blogging 'pen pal') -- what a nice consequence of technology, to be sure.

Thanks,
Lisa

Rob said...

Lisa,
We are in the middle of our potato harvest right now. One of my favourite times of year!
Rob