Harvesting Onions Round One

I can't believe it was only a few months ago that I was tucking onion sets into the soil.  I believe I planted them in late March and it took very little time to get growing.

 In only a matter of weeks they sent up strong healthy growth and proceeded to fill in the bed.

They were so happy here that they grew like this for another couple of months before they finally fell over.  This was my signal that they were about ready to harvest.

I pulled the irrigation lines out of the bed in an attempt to let them dry out a bit before harvest.  Monsoon season had other plans however and proceeded to dump buckets of rain on my garden for several weeks.  It never did quite dry out, but I did chance upon a nice clear sunny morning so I took the opportunity to get some harvesting done.

As I pulled them from the bed I laid them out in the sunshine to dry out a bit and begin the curing process.  I also did my best to clean them up as much as possible since I was pulling them from fairly sticky mud and didn't want them to rot.  I had to toss many into the compost that were mushy from sitting in the wet soil for too long already.

Once I finished digging them out I let them sit in the sun for a few hours, but had to rush to bring them indoors in the afternoon because another monsoon storm was heading my way. They will finishing curing on wire shelves in my kitchen.  Once the leaves dry up I will cut them off and store the cured bulbs in the pantry.