Allium Harvest

July was harvest month for our onions, garlic, and shallots. We unfortunately waited a little too long for onion harvest. Onions get harvested once the leaves flop over. However, we have learned from past experience that if we wait too long and the neck of the onion gets soft before it is pulled from the ground, it will not keep well. We probably waited a week too long this year. The onions were fine to eat, but since they would not store well, we sliced them up, cooked them until caramelized, and then canned them. We also made and canned a batch of French onion soup.

We are usually pretty good at timing the harvest of garlic. Usually ready around July 14, we pull a head or two to confirm that cloves have formed and the heads have not split. While the heads looked good, we gave the garlic a few extra days and harvested on the 18th. There have been years where we waited at least 2 extra weeks. Not only is it important to get the garlic out at the right time so it stores well, we then succession plant bush beans to keep weed stress down and produce beans for canning. When we planted the garlic last year, I thought we would get a small crop because many of the cloves seemed too soft. We did get fewer heads than usual, 80 rather then 100+, but it should still be enough to get us through the winter and provide enough to re-plant in October.

This year, the crop I have been most excited about is our shallots. We have been growing onions using sets, but that has limited us to the type of onions available in the bulk bins at the hardware store. If we can grow onions from seed, that would allow us to choose from a greater variety and also allow us to choose day-long onions, which are more suitable to our growing zone and could maybe give us bigger bulbs. I started a small batch of shallots from seed, and have been carefully weeding and monitoring their growth. While it looked like we could probably have let the shallots go a little longer, we harvested them a few days after the garlic, so we did not make the same mistake we did with the onions. Since this seemed successful, I think we will expand to onions from seed next year.

The garlic and shallots will cure on tables in our screen porch. Once the leaves have dried, we will do some trimming and store the bulbs for future use.