For the 15th year, the
onions have done their thing and blessed us with a plentiful harvest. Each year after a season of growing, I fret over the timing to pull, cure, and store the onions. Mother nature and working with her has everything to do with whether or not you'll keep all those nice, dry onions you pulled, or whether they'll succumb to rotting because they either weren't quite ready, were left in the ground too long and started to resprout, or weren't cured properly. The shriveled, dried tops is the first sign they are ready. They are then pulled and left to dry in the garden a day or two (my best luck was laying them on straw bails), then moved under acovered porch for about two weeks to cure. In the
past, I've let them cure for as much as a month and end up storing them when fall comes. My best season for keepers were years we had drought. And obviously opposite from that, wet years produced several rotters. This year appears half and half unless my dear hubby succeeds in finding the perfect spot to cure the o's. He's quite concerned about them -- even the night dew they attract under a covered porch has him worried they'll rot from moisture (he moved them twice now!) I'm not as worried - I've never lost more than half and with the amount of onions in the ground (over 300), keeping half is fine by me. Christmas dinner usually sees the final onions from a summer harvest - those are good keepers if you ask me! I grow them mainly for my mom and she doesn't mind that I plant seedlings, but her preference is sets. Having grown both, I'd have to admit the sets produced better keepers.
For the 15th year, the onions have done their thing and blessed us with a plentiful harvest. Each year after a season of growing, I fret over the timing to pull, cure, and store the onions. Mother nature and working with her has everything to do with whether or not you'll keep all those nice, dry onions you pulled, or whether they'll succumb to rotting because they either weren't quite ready, were left in the ground too long and started to resprout, or weren't cured properly. The shriveled, dried tops is the first sign they are ready. They are then pulled and left to dry in the garden a day or two (my best luck was laying them on straw bails), then moved under acovered porch for about two weeks to cure. In the 
past, I've let them cure for as much as a month and end up storing them when fall comes. My best season for keepers were years we had drought. And obviously opposite from that, wet years produced several rotters. This year appears half and half unless my dear hubby succeeds in finding the perfect spot to cure the o's. He's quite concerned about them -- even the night dew they attract under a covered porch has him worried they'll rot from moisture (he moved them twice now!) I'm not as worried - I've never lost more than half and with the amount of onions in the ground (over 300), keeping half is fine by me. Christmas dinner usually sees the final onions from a summer harvest - those are good keepers if you ask me! I grow them mainly for my mom and she doesn't mind that I plant seedlings, but her preference is sets. Having grown both, I'd have to admit the sets produced better keepers. 
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