Today I went through the garden and pulled up most of the onions and garlic. This stinky endeavor left us with about 100 onion bulbs curing in the shade on the back porch. In the past I've ordered sets of onions from dixondale farms. This year I got 2 sets of white onions and 1 set of reds from Ford's. I usually find a little stick out in the yard that's about 1/2 an inch wide and poke 2-inch holes in the ground for the little baby onions. I space them 2-3 inches apart and then there's nothing else to do until harvesting time in a few months. I probably planted them in early February so I guess it took them about 3 months to grow. The greens had been falling over like the one in the picture above so I figured it was time to get them out of the ground. If you leave them in the ground too long they get hard to find because their leaves turn brown and blend in with the mulch, and I've had some start rotting when they stay in the ground too long.
Today I went through and just pulled them up by their necks. The ground wasn't too dry so they didn't break off in the ground and leave me with a hand full of onion greens. I had to use a trowel for the garlic, but the onions were easy. I can't grow enormous onions like I see in the store. Most of ours are roughly golf-ball sized with a couple of the monster ones just smaller than a baseball. The organic gardening book told me to set them on a mesh to dry with their greens attached so they're sitting outside right now getting cured up until I can start cooking with them.
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