Onion Harvest

The garlic was lifted first.  It is now nicely cured but perhaps a little too dried (I left it in the garage window and the peach tree didn’t shade it quite as much as I thought. We’ll see how it keeps).  18 plants, in 16 square feet yielded 3 lbs of Red Russian hard necked garlic.  That should give us about 90 cloves to use all winter and 18 more to plant in October.  It will store well in the garage which doesn’t freeze and has no motor vehicle living in it.

After that the Stutgart Onions were ready.  Their tops were starting to topple first and once the majority were down, I lifted them and stored them on trays in the shade under the deck to dry and cure.  They are almost ready and I’ll store them in the garage as well.

The Pattersons were last.  As seems quite common with me they started to go to seed near the end of their life, sending up flower stalks which I immediately cut off.  My son TOG had some Pattersons that went to seed about 10 years ago.  But only the ones that were shaded by some trees at about 2:00 in the afternoon grew seed stalks so we have tried to keep them in a full sun location.

Alas, last year the bed next to my onions had raspberries growing tall and many of the Pattersons again went to seed.  I thought all was lost; that these onions wouldn’t store well but it turned out they lasted just as long as the non-hard necked ones – all the way to June.  They weren’t number ones but the stalk’s hard shaft was easily separated from the onion in the kitchen.

Because of the seed stalks, the onion’s other green leaves were slow to topple.  I waited, not watering for an extra week or two and TOG had a look and said they should come out so I finally lifted them. 

They are now curing under the deck and will be ready for the garage in another week.

 

 

They are dry enough to weigh: the Stutgarts gave me 21 lbs and the Pattersons 16 lbs.  That’s from 34 square feet of bed making it 1.09 lbs per square foot -- not as good as last year’s 1.97 but fine.  This year’s Pattersons were smaller than last year -- perhaps due to the lack of well composted horse that I had used before.  (next year I should have some well matured chicken that I acquired this last March).  However, TOG finds non-jumbo onions sell well in his farmer’s market stall.  Not everyone wants a full 1 lb onion.

I may be looking for another storage onion variety.  Patterson is the one recommended by Eliot Coleman through Johnny’s Seeds.  Perhaps our latitude being 4 degrees farther north than Maine makes a difference with day length and toggling to seed production?    

The Stutgart onion sets were only a last minute grab since I was facing an unknown lockdown and I thought it may be useful to grow more onions than I’d already seeded indoors.  I’m surprised at how well they did and will watch them for taste and storage qualities.  But I’ll keep looking for the perfect winter storage onion for the Fraser Valley.  

Happy Gardening.