Onion Harvest : Round Two

It has been about a month since I harvested the first bed of onions.  The second bed I left until I could find a large block of time to devote to the project.  The bed was thick with weeds and the rains have stopped over the past couple of weeks so the soil was very dried out.  Some of the onions had begun to cure where they were.  I started at one end of the bed and worked my way to the other end row by row.  I made one pile of onions and one pile of weeds next to the bed and was again impressed by the size of many of the yellow onions.  Some were larger than my palm!

This bed also contained my first attempt at growing shallots.  They seemed to thrive in my garden this year and I was rewarded with a nice harvest from a 2 x 3 foot area on the end of this bed.

Both of these harvests were brought indoors to finishing curing on shelves in my kitchen.  Once the leaves dry up I will trim them all back and store the onions in a cool dark room.  The onions that were harvested a month ago were at the point in the curing process where they needed to be trimmed for storage.  Once they are all cleaned up I like to keep them in onion bags that I have saved from the store.  There was an impressive amount when I was done and I hope they will last until next spring.

The reds don't keep as well as the yellows so I will be cooking my way through that bag first.  I also kept out some onions that looked like they would go bad soon, so those will go to the front of the line when I pick them out for a recipe.  Chances are they will end up in a batch of salsa once the tomatoes start ripening. In a month I will add a few more bags of cured onions to my stores and I will be one step closer to being ready for winter.