When my garden was smaller and easier to manage, as I was working full time in healthcare and had 4 small children, I didn’t bother with growing onions. I bought them from a farm in the valley and called it a day. My thoughts were a) they needed a lot of space (false) b) they were hard to mange (also false) c) the taste of a fresh onion was “meh” (definitely false).
Over the last decade, I have fallen in love with the taste of fresh onions, and perfected the way to fit onions into our life for growing and storage.
Bunching onions are great to grow as I harvest them, chop off the tops to use and put the bottoms in water on the windowsill and they keep coming back. I planted perennial ones just this year.
I plant roughly 300 sets and some self started seed onions in early spring as soon as the ground can be worked. They fit mostly neatly into a bed of about 4ft wide and 8 ft long.I ignore the spacing on the package and just use the thinned out smaller ones for fresh eating all summer.
This leaves me in the fall with about 150 ish onions to dry, braid and store until the next harvest. We use a lot of onions. Both Red and Yellow Storage varieties are my favorites.And I mostly grow short day onions as we don’t really have the growing season for longer day varieties.
Cost wise, they are worth it. A bag of 100 onion sets is $4.99. So for $15, I have enough onions to last me a year. And not that I anticipate an onion shortage but I like having my own supply. And I hate having to run to the store. When I winter sow my seeds, I can cut that cost down even more.
I have found them to be mostly disease resistance and they like to be planted near my potatoes but not near my peas.
I harvest them usually in early August when their green tops have flopped over. I put them on screens in my barn and cure them for at least a month. Once dry I bring them in and braid them up. In a small house this is a great way to store a lot of onions. Any that didn’t get braided go into recycled netted onions bags to be used first.
Onions don’t really like to be stored in the dark, opposite of potatoes. Onions like the light, but they also like it cool. So hanging from my curtain rods seems to suit them well. It’s April now and after being stored for almost 8 months, some are going soft. I break those ones off the braid, and chop them up.
I like to flash freeze them in trays, then pop them into bags to freeze. Easy to grab a handful to cook with this way, especially when things get busy.
Onion skins and bits and bobs get saved in a scrap bag in the freezer for when use in making stock. I just grab a handful and chuck it in for extra nutrition and color. I dislike wasting anything homegrown and onions are high in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.
I love reading old wive’s tales about food and recently came across some about onions. According to the National Onion Association (who knew ?!?) “placing raw, cut up onions around your home could cure you from the bubonic plague.”
And the website “Onions in Literature” (I feel I have missed out on a lot of onion education in my life ) writes about an old Turkish legend telling when Satan was thrown out of heaven, garlic sprouted where he put his left foot and onions sprouted where he put his right foot.
I’m sure the pungent odor was a mystery back then until we knew it was sulphuric compounds making us cry.
I use my onions mostly for fresh cooking, such as our guacamole, in preserves like our zucchini salsa, to dye Easter eggs and have even used onion skins to dye our sheep’s wool after spinning. It’s a beautiful, rich color.
I like to grate onions up in the food processor and dehydrate them then grind in my herb grinder for onion powder. Beautiful for that onion flavor when you cook for people who think they don’t like onions.
I ask you, after all this : who could possibly not love onions ??
Love Jenn xx
