The Great Onion Harvest of 2018

“Oh, I just need an onion, I”ll stop by the store today.” That used to be the maximum effort and concern I ever gave towards acquiring an onion. Such a common vegetable, many of us use them often. But after helping harvest Horton Road’s 2018 onion crop, numbering in the thousands, I can’t say I’ll ever look at an onion the same way…

Here at Horton Road we plant onions and shallots every 6 inches. We initially planted the starts in early May in an epic 2 hour 40 minute plantout. Onions are ready to harvest when their tops have fallen over (sometimes they require a push) and they have started to brown. It is important to make sure onions are relatively dry when harvesting.

Onions bring out the best in people.. here’s Reiden harvesting our storage onions. The onion harvest was one of those rare tasks that was so large it really required all of us to make it happen at one point or another.

Our onions are harvested into carts and then transported to a greenhouse to be laid out to dry.

Here’s Taylor laying out onions in one of our greenhouses. Onions can be eaten fresh, aka without being dried, but they will keep much longer if dried out.

Our process here is pretty passive as we simply lay the onions and shallots out in greenhouses and let them dry over time, more active ventilation would speed up the drying process.

 Our onions and shallots will stay here for the next couple weeks as they continue to dry.

For now we continue to “harvest” sweet onions by simply picking out the right size onions from the greenhouse and trimming off the roots and tops. The storage onions and shallots will remain in the greenhouse until the tops are fully dry which is an indicator that the onion is getting dry and will be good for storage!

Tada!