Gardening: Onion Harvest Time

The other day I harvested about two-thirds of the onions I planted in the fall. I’m fairly pleased with the results, but I could have done better, I think.

I planted three varieties of big onions. One is a white onion and the other is a yellow onion that I transplanted from onion sets I purchased locally, but I don’t recall the names of these varieties. The other big onion I planted was Red Creole which I grew from seed.

A few of the plants made fairly big onions, about softball size. However, most were golf ball to baseball size. I think my biggest problem was consistent moisture. A few times, I let the plants go too long between rain or waterings. By the time the leaf tips turn brown, the onions have probably gone too long without water.

Next season, I’m going to try to keep even moisture to prevent the tips from ever turning brown.

The seven inches of rain we received last week didn’t help matters, either. After that deluge, almost all of the tops of my onions flopped over, at which time they need to be harvested. Without the heavy rain, maybe the onions would have grown for another week or two.

Onions like a lot of fertilizer during their early growth phase, so maybe I should have fertilized them more. Before I planted them, I amended the bed with some compost, but I don’t think I used enough. Right now, the bed looks kind of brown and sandy. I probably need to add more compost next season as well.

Finally, young onion plants do not compete very well with weeds for nutrients and water in the soil. I let the weeds take over a few times after I planted the onions, and that probably stunted their growth.

Elsewhere in the garden, I lost a few potato plants from the heavy rain last week. The spot where I planted some purple potatoes lies a little low, and water stood there for several days after the rain. The tops quickly wilted and turned brown. I tried salvaging some potatoes from the wet soil, but it looks like I lost all of them to rot.

A reader called me this week and said she had the same problem, but not quite as bad. She said she harvested a couple of plants to see what the potatoes looked like, and about half were rotten. This lady had two rows of potatoes and asked what she should do. I recommended harvesting one row and let the other grow for a few weeks. That way, she can at least get some little potatoes now and maybe a few big ones later on.

The lesson here, of course, is to plant potatoes on higher ground. They don’t like wet feet. I’ve been stealing a few potatoes from another patch I have growing on higher ground. Man, they are tasty! If you didn’t grow taters this spring, you really missed out.

Maybe it wasn’t the best year for taters, but it’s always worth the try.

Some of you reading this might think it’s pretty silly to go through all the effort and disappointment of growing taters when you can buy them so cheaply at the grocery store. But you’ve never tasted a tater from the garden, have you?