[Frog]

Got in from work half an hour ago - am shattered. OH wanting to know where we are going to dry the onions (all 90 of them   ) we harvested yesterday. It's been raining here, so have them sat on a tarpaulin on the kitchen floor! All of the books say they should be left out in the sun to dry - ok if you have sun!
Am really sorry if this has already been asked - am too tired and brain dead to do much of a search  :oops: .
Any suggestions?................
Many thanks

[Lee1978]

what about a shed/greenhouse if you have one, or string them up in the garage?

[SnooziSuzi]

my shallots are in the GH drying out nicely  

[Trillium]

You don't really need sun for drying onions, just air circulation. Stringing or pegging them to a line in some dry shed, back room, basement, etc will do the trick. Leave until the skins feel papery dry. Just don't crowd them - it's the air that's needed.

[Frog]

Many, many thanks for all of your replies. We have decided to try to rig up an indoor washing line in the garage to hang them on! Going to have to buy an awful lot more pegs!!!!    

[DD.]

I will have over 250 to dry & store.

I bring them home, & lay them on a sheet in front of the garage door. If it looks like rain, they get dragged in. Ideally I'd put them on a raised wire frame or similar, but there's too many.

Is it me or is everyone else early this year, or are some being a bit eager? Only one or two of mine are starting to topple in common with everyone else on our site. Going to be a couple of weeks yet - and I wasn't late getting them in.

[peapod]

Mine have toppled, but do I have to wait till they die back? If I leave them in will they get a bit bigger?

[DD.]

They'll get no bigger now.

I leave them for a couple of weeks after this to mature. The NGA & Dr. H also recommend this.

They are then lifted, (gently with a fork - stop pulling now!), and left to dry.

[peapod]

Ta DD!

(theyre my lads onions, Ill not let him pull them :-) )

[Aunt Sally]

Onions are ready to lift when the tops fall over and the foliage has gone quite brown.

If they are easy to lift from the soil then lift them.  If they give some resistance put a small hand fork under them and loosen the roots, then leave them where they are for a few days to dry a bit.

As Trillium said lots of air is what they need to ripen but a bit of sun does speed the process.  Any onions which have "thick necks" or have not fallen over and still have green leaves when lifted will not store for long and should be used first.  

Thin necked, well ripened ones should store all through the winter.

I lifted my autumn planted onions and shallots this week but my spring planted ones are not ready yet !

[diggerjoe]

Learnt the hard way this year not to grow onions at the bottom end of allotment had to take them up as they were rotting :cry: . I shall grow them further up next year where the soil is lghter and dryer. But this is first year weve managed to use all the allotment so we are still learning what does best where . The shallots have dried really well but only half the number we expected, rest went soft. I have just been given some red french shallot sets when is the best time to get them in - I presume they will over winter.

[Aunt Sally]

What kind of rot did they have diggerjoe  :?:

[diggerjoe]

I can only describe it Aunt Sally as squashy bulbs. Some of them were fine and some just went very soft. While it was sunny they seemed fine than the rain set in and some just went soggy. I had a a mix of red and some unknown that I was given. The shallotts were not so bad some in the cluster had gone soft but managed to save some and dry them off. Never grown onions before so wasnt sure what to expect. When they dried some of the white onions had thick necks and didnt dry so I 've used those and strung the others.

[compostqueen]

I harvested a whopper of an onion yesterday  :shock:   No time to dry it off though as it was straight in my frying pan    

Drying onions is a problem though when you run out of room. Why do we grow so many  :roll:  My lotty shed is stacked out with onions, shallots, garlic, and every rack and surface at home is draped with them. Now it's time for getting spuds in too. My OH is going to go nuts when he can't get in his workshop  

Then there's the pumpkins  :shock:

[Trillium]

Sounds like diggerjoe's onions just plain got too much water, between rain and the runoff from being at the bottom of a slightly sloping plot. If the water sits for even a few days in the onion patch, they'll quickly turn to the mush you described. They do like water, but in moderation and never ever sitting in pools of it. Gardening is a definite learning curve. Our John had that same problem with one of his beds and he wrote an article and some pix on how he solved it by raising that section up a bit. Check through the diaries section for it (in this past year).