Onions

In my opinion, only garlic surpasses onion when it comes to cooking. I love the smell of onions. Crazy as it may be, onions and garlic are as attractive to me as sugar and cream. They just make totally different delicacies I crave and enjoy.

I plant lots of onions every year. Part of the reason is because they are the first thing I can get in the ground. It's nice to have your garden look established so early in the season, even if half of it is onion. You don't have to wait for them to get "ripe." A few weeks after planting you can harvest some as "green onion" if you want. Even if an onion is small it's still usable.

Some advice - plant onion from seedlings not from bulb starts. The seedlings usually come in a container that has a bunch of tiny onions growing all together that you have to pull apart and put in the ground separately. Starts are the small bulbs that have already had one growth. The seedlings will grow bigger. I heard that on the garden show years ago and tested the theory out. It's true. Plant seedlings.

In the past weeks I've had a few people ask me how will they know if an onion is ready to be pulled out of the ground. Upon returning from my vacation, I found half my onions were ready to be pulled and few rotten ones. So I took pictures to show you garden lovin people what an onion looks like when it wants to be loosened from its earthly hold.

To start off - onions can be pulled at any time. If you get a hankering for an onion to munch on or throw in your favorite dish, you can pull that puppy out whether big or small. If you like to see how big they can get - leave them in!

Here are some onions that the tops have fallen over. When they do this it okay to leave them in the ground for a little while longer. This was taken last Saturday. This weekend I will probably pull them out. When they have a good amount of green on them as these do you can pull them and braid all the tops together so that they can hang up out of the way. It's really pretty too!

This is how I found half my onions when I got home last week. They are ready to be pulled and cleaned up.

I pull them out and sluff off the loose outer layer. Next I rip the top off close to the onion and most of the roots off. Sometimes I rub them on the grass to get the dirt off. It depends what they pulled up with them when they came out. Don't wash them off if you are going to store them. That makes them squishy.

I store my onions in a crate because the air can circulate around them. If they don't get some air they are more likely to mold. Order of use: Use the walla walla and red variety first if you can. They don't keep as long as white and yellow onion. Usually I have onions from my garden through December. I store them either in a crate downstairs or a few in a basket on my table for quick use.

Make sure you take pictures of these babies. They have nice autumny colors and are enjoyable to look at. Some of these were small. I keep all onions if they are usable. The red onions I am pulling out this weekend are twice as big as the ones I pulled last week. Different variety.

It's important to get them out of the ground if the tops get dried up. If you don't, you risk pulling out what seems to be a perfectly nice onion and finding this . . .

. . . rotten, squishy, yucky, not good to eat onion that smells bad. So don't let your and their hard work go to waste. Pull them before they spoil.

Max deserves a notable mention in this blog. He is my constant companion when I do yard work. Peter hangs with me sometimes, but Max is with me more often then not when I am outside. Thanks for the love Max.