We have harvested all our onions. 37 from a space no bigger than 120cm long by 45cm wide, using sets from Wilkinsons! Now that shows how easy it is to grow onions if nothing else does. I have hung them by their necks in the shed from a makeshift drying rack consisting of an old underbed shoe rack, dismantled and attached to the shed roof and walls with garden twine and nails.
Maybe next year we will tie them correctly in plaits…for now they look happy enough. When the necks start to go papery and the onions develop more of a coating, i’ll take them down and put them on top of the drying rack, for use throughout the winter.
To keep the space busy, i’ve emptied the remaining hundreds of Amsterdam Forcing carrot seeds into the space where the onions came from and covered it with a cloche. I don’t think we’ll have to do much thinning as the slugs generally do that for us. Maybe it’s time for another load of nematodes!
September 1st, 2007 at 4:22 pm
My dad once hung some Onions in his shed for drying. A rat ate them all in 2 days! I bet it smells good in your shed now with the Onions?
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Wow! I used Wilko onion sets too but the lack of sunshine and oversupply of water meant they started to go soft in the ground. I dug mine up early. Glad yours were a success!
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Nice. They look lovely.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Thanks,they do both taste and smell fab. Lot sof lovely comments!
September 11th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
hello marcus, it is paul from sunny luton. like you have
dug some onions up and need to hang them somewhere. will they be ok in the garage ? the lights are on sometimes. will that matter ?
ta paul
September 11th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Hello there! Glad you’ve got some sun…though not quite the Dom Rep eh! We’ve settled not so happily back into work, and are already planning our next trip! How’s things with you guys? My email is mjward_uk@yahoo.co.uk if you’d prefer to email. As regards the onions, dark is better as they taste bitter if subjected to too much bright light, but i doubt you will have the garage light on that much! Should be fine. Hope they taste great! Cheers.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Love your rack - wil go onto Freecycle tonight and see in i can get something I can do something similar in my shed - useful even if I do eventually braid them to get them out of the way!
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Thanks Sal, i’ve just hung up the Japanese ones from this year, although they won’t keep as long!
August 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am
[…] year we just strung the onions up on some old wire shoe racks as can be seen from last years post here. This year we have probably 4 times as many onions from the same 1.2 metre square space. […]