How to Harvest Onions: My best ever sets

what is going on guys welcome back to digging for dinner and another video today we're going to be harvesting some of our onions these are the white onions and there's many different different ways to do it here and I'm just going to show you mine step one would obviously be there to get traditionally to get a fork underneath these and sort of prize and tease them out so that you don't damage any of the root or the bulb in the process of harvesting and quite fortunately because this is a no dig allotment even so it is a relatively young no development there's no need for a for these things have just been lifting out effortlessly with zero damage I just take one now and show you it's too easy and as you can see we do have all of the roots and there's no damage done to the bulb and these things are you know well and truly ready to come out and so what we'll do is we'll basically just pull them all out and then we just lay them on the surface of the bed or on the pathway and we'll just let them dry out for a little bit let their what it's essentially at the moment muds just turning to dust and we'll just brush it off and then we'll do the next step but yeah priorities is to get them all out before any more heavy rain is due because they're they're done you can tell they're done because they've all fallen over when you're growing any onion when it when it gets to the stage where about 3/4 of your onions have actually fallen over that's a good indication to start harvesting and yet if you don't and you leave them and you do get you know downpours of rain at this stage they're more likely to rot away and not store so we'll pull all the onions now and then we'll just made them all out to dry for a few hours as you can see they come up without any efforts of just pull straight out the ground without the need for any Forks or garden tools which is the way I like it can see that they are actually rooted in their finger thumb absolutely effortless once the onions have been dry in for a few hours you'll notice that the compost comes with relatively quickly and the skins have dried out ever so slightly now rather than try and store your onions like this where they could potentially be pests damage or disease or any damage that would then lead to disease it's a good idea to take off some of the skin some of the layers to get down to your last undamaged skin it doesn't matter if it's brown or or not it will Brown up once it's been stored for a few weeks lastly ever better and we are going to leave the roots and we're going to leave the stem on this thing while it's storing and that will basically make me store a lot better and then you know in three four or five weeks time we can come back and we can clean up the roots et cetera but what we're looking for is to make sure that it's it's not soft give it a squeeze not too hard but a little bit of a squeeze and making sure there's no scratches or damage and if there is it's probably not going to store too well on this example it looks absolutely nothing so yeah we'll continue to basically peel these onions back down to their final presentable skin shall we say presentable layer and and then yeah we'll proceed to start to store these to hang in the onions and drying them I use these things which are shelves essentially that you can get when you buy a greenhouse even a cheap greenhouse like a four tiered shelf to a shed looking in greenhouse comes with these things and many of you guys already know that those sort of structures don't last too long where's these last four years so they are absolutely ideal for getting your onions upside down so the water can drain and naturally from the stem and make your onions store for for many many months so yeah our we're going to do is we're just going to thread the onion wrap on that I've already peeled we're just gonna thread the onion through the hole that's a bit hard to hold this at the same time so I've just set up a bucket so I can sit this on the top and then get all these onions through these holes I do have more than one of these anyone wondering because it's a good idea to obviously leave some space around the onion for airflow so that they don't rot out so yeah let me set this up on the bucket and we'll get to work and we're just dinner and that's it guys and that's what we're looking for the onion just push through it can take some work to get all of the growth through the hole but it does eventually go through it doesn't matter if if this sort of snaps and crackles the water can still drain from the stem and and then yeah once we've done all of these we'll put them aside and we'll leave them until this has gone you know really dry really brittle and brown and then we can obviously come and take some off and trim up the roots or if you want to leave this on by all means you can and you can use it to act as an anchor around some string so you can actually tie your onions into into sort of clusters so you can just all rip one off as and when you need them and yeah I'm not sure if I'm going to tie them yet or if I'm gonna just store them and laying down better but we'll see at the moment when we're nowhere near there yet we've now got to start to peel these onions and get them all into these racks so then just get to work and I just use the bucket that I've got the rack on to put the the outer layers shall we say just said that nothing ends up blowing away and that's how we do it guys you could do the exact same process with garlic as well and there is a lot of space left in here there are a lot of holes but as I've said you do need to leave gaps between your onions just so that this there's air flow and they don't rot out so yeah I'll just hope I've got enough of these these racks available but uh but yeah that's how we do it I'm gonna continue now until to live on our racks has to be said that these are some of the best-looking onions that I've grown in in a long time I am so pleased with how these have turned out and we love onions in our house so you know we're gonna get a lot of use out of these for for many months rack number two [Music] [Music] that's now all of the onions turned upside down and be skinned so we're gonna leave them now to dry for however long it takes about six to eight weeks usually and of course you can eat them straight away if like me you've got some that are a little bit smaller this is my only smallish one that it does have a bit of a nick in it you can indeed eat them straight away I am one of these weird people that that does enjoy a raw onion from time to time preferably with something but I'm yeah I'm just demonstrating that you can even straight away and they are delicious my top tips for harvesting onions is to do it in a dry calm day don't do it when it's wet don't do it when when it's been wet and like today for example if you can just see we've got blue skies and 25° say it's rather warm it is the perfect day to harvest onions so yeah if you've got onions in the ground and the tips are start to fall over get them out get them upside down and get them drying if I do decide to string the onions up I will make a video and I will order these videos together into one how to grow thank you very much for watching if you're not subscribed please subscribe and I will see you in the next video on the 11th um cheers guys [Music]

Channel: diggingfordinner

Views: 2,124

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: joe mills, diggingfordinner, what is going on, organic, gardening, garden, allotment, no dig allotment, plot, no dig beds, onions sets, how to harvest onions, growing onions

Id: c140wyiYvC4

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 12 2019