Storing Onions

When you spend a lot of time and energy producing a top-quality product, you want to ensure that it's properly looked after.  How you store onions is important.

This year's Copra onions have been harvested.  As described in an earlier post this summer, when the tops started to fall over, the plants were signalling that they were reaching maturity.  When all the tops had come down (a couple were helped by me!) I pulled the onions up and left them on the top of the bed to continue curing in the sun.

Onions drying on wire racks

After a few days, rain was predicted and so it was time to bring the onions under cover.  I placed them on big wire racks we have for sifting soil and left them in the potting shed to finish.

Trimmed onions

Today the tops looked quite sere, so I cut the dried tops off with scissors, being careful to leave a long top in case any onions still had moisture in their stems.

A number of years ago, my husband made me a vegetable bin.  It has 3 storage sections, 2 of which I store onions in.  These sections have wire fronts to allow air flow.  The bottom section I use for potatoes and this one has a solid front to keep the potatoes in the dark.  The bin sits in our unheated garage and the onions last very nicely in their storage bins until spring.  This year's crop was more than the bins could handle, so the remaining onions will stay in their wooden crate  and sit in our cool dry crawl space until needed.

If you'd like to braid your onions, keep the dried tops on.  There are lots of good videos on the Internet to tell you how to do it.  I wasn't very proficient, so this is how I store my onions!  Hang braided onions in a cool, dry place and just snip off an onion as you need it.

I'm very disappointed with the yellow onions I grew from sets this year.  They are quite a bit smaller than the Copra and have flat bottoms.  This means a lot of digging to get out the root end.  And much to my dismay, I discovered they're already going soft!  Obviously not good storage onions at all!  Thank goodness for Copra!  These onions are large, have good flavour and store extremely well into the spring.  In fact, when cleaning out the bottom bin this morning I discovered some forgotten onions from last year and while most had started sprouting, 3 were still nice and firm!  What a great onion!