The end of a nearly-10-month process has finally arrived: the onion harvest! While this is probably the longest start-to-finish thing we do in the garden, it is one of the easiest as well. As mentioned in The Onion Experiment, we start our onions from seeds rather than buying onion sets. It definitely takes longer, but there’s something very satisfying in the process.

The most work we put in was setting out our onion “seedlings” in the Spring, and then we sat back and watched them grow. We let the onions tell us when they were ready to harvest – once the greens started to die back and turn floppy – although we did steal a few for salads and cooking beforehand. While we lost a few along the way, I feel like we ended up harvesting more than we planted: for reasons unknown, many of the onions split as they grew, resulting in two separate bulbs. It was either a fluke of the seeds, or something to do with the weather, because the “extra” onions we shared with friends and family also grew in splits. It all works out in the end, because the more onions the merrier!

With the onions harvested, we let them lay on the table outside for a few days to start the drying process, and then we had a true eureka!-moment and realized how to dry them the rest of the way needed for storage. The indoor greenhouse.

As you can see, it worked perfectly, and tucked against the back wall of the porch, lightly covered with netting, they should stay nice and dry and get good airflow. Plus my house won’t smell like onions – these were particularly strong smelling when freshly harvested.

The next phase of the experiment will be to see how long they store. Purple/red onions are not always the best for long-term storage {but we love the flavor so much}, but hopefully if we get them good and dry they’ll last us awhile. The heat is working in our favor on this point, since they’re already starting to dry nicely.

I also need to figure out how to braid them together for storage; we’ve heard they maintain freshness a little better if the green stays on and they hang versus cutting it off to store in a basket.

It won’t be long and we’ll start the process all over: mid-September onion starting will be here before we know it! Now to decide if we grow these again, or alternate with another variety…