What ingredient do you cook with regular, that creates so many tears? The onion of course. Oh how the tears pour down while chopping! I'm gonna talk a bit about those wonderfully flavorful healthy onions. Growing using and storing this great ingredient.
Growing onions isn't all that difficult here in Kentucky. It's one of the first things to go in the ground here in zone 6. We garden mostly with raised rows here. Which is an excellent way to raise onions. The dirt in raised rows generally stays nice and soft, allowing the onions to grow in size quite well. We usually grow mostly candy onions that we buy as tiny plants in bunches. As the onions begin to grow I scrape the dirt from around the edge of the onion plant. This allows the onion the push up and out easily. Mulching raised rows really helps to keep the dirt and plants happy. It also keeps the weeds at bay which keeps me happy. Our walkways are lined with cardboard and mulched heavily with leftover bedding, hay, straw or even woodchips. Mulched walkways are so nice for the gardener. No mud to walk in! Our gardens are fertilzed with rabbit manure along with compost from bedding the animals on the homestead. This adds excellent nutrients for our plants to grow. Growing onions is a very good crop for most anyone to grow and fairly easy too.
Onions are used here almost daily. There are few recipes that don't call for some form of onions, or even onion powder. I know most would say that candy onions are the best to grow if your planning to store them for year long use. I just love these onions they really have an excellent flavor. We picked our onions all 150 the beginning of July this summer. I hung the onions on the lattice in our porch area to dry up really well for two weeks with nice warm weather. Then moved the onions to our basement some stored in cardboard boxes and some strung together and hung. Well it's now the beginning of January and im using them still. Today I decided to go thru my stash and check for onions that may be getting soft. I pulled out around 10-12 that were sprouting and maybe 5 getting soft. This tells me its time to begin dehydrating some. I go thru them, choose enough small onions to fill up my dehydrator. I peel, chop and dehydrate. Dehydrate outside if you can or a garage. Tends to be quite smelly. When dry I place in a jar with a coffee filter filled with rice and tied shut. This rice bag helps to keep out moisture. These dried minced onions can be used in any recipe calling for chopped onions or ground to powder if needed. This helps to prolong our use of the onions we grow without them going bad. Onions can also be chopped and frozen or even canned to preserve your harvest. By sorting thru every so often this lets me know when I need to take action to save my harvest. The sprouted onions I found can be opened up separated and planted to grow more onions. I still have lots of nice large firm onions for fresh eating also. Onions will be getting planted again in a couple months and our process will start all over while we are still using from last summers harvest.
Onions are a very beginner friendly crop that most folks use very often. The cost to grow these plants is minimal compared to buying at the market. You can also feel great knowing you grew them yourself. They can be used all year long if stored and preserved. Take care of your crop even after the harvest and it will serve you well!
