How to Harvest, Cure and Store Onions – Root Cellaring, Braiding, Dehydrating and Freezing

You can enjoy home grown onions for months after the growing season has finished with just a little extra time and effort. In this post we’ll cover onion harvest, curing onions, and several different onion storage methods.

Which Onions are Best for Storage?

I usually grow onions from onion sets (the little mini onion bulbs).  Out of the red, white and yellow varieties I’ve tried, the yellow Stuttgarter Riesen has been the best keeper. Stuttgarter Riesen is a large, deep golden-yellow onion with firm white flesh.  The reds and whites I’ve tried have not kept as well, so I usually use them first.  My friend, Tami, said that the onions she started from seed were much more solid and less prone to rotting than the ones that she started from sets.  The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible recommends Stockton Reds for storage.  I’ve grown them, and they store fairly well, but the Stuttgarters store better.  He also recommends the varieties Copra and Prince.

Look for short-day or long-day onions, depending on your location.  Short-day onions grow better in the south, because they require roughly equal amounts of light and darkness.  Long-day onions are better suited for the north, because they require longer hours of sunlight to set bulbs.  Northern growers should get their onions in as early as possible, because once the daylight house get shorter, your onions will only fill out the layers they’ve already formed.  June planted onions = largely a waste of time.

Another note:  Make sure to buy good quality seeds or sets.  This spring, the red onion sets that were available locally were kind of scrubby looking – lots of rotten little bulbs in the baggie.  I bought some anyway, because we do like red onions.  This fall, when I started digging, many of the red onions were in bad condition with rotten outer layers.  None of the other onion patches had the same issue.  No more questionable onion sets in my garden. They are not worth the effort.

How and When to Harvest Onions

Onions can be harvested for fresh use at any time during the growing season, from small green onions early in the season to full size mature onions.  My friend Julie’s mom purposely plants her onion seedlings very thick so that she can thin them out and eat lots of small green onions fresh out of the garden.  To harvest onions, simply loosen the soil, if needed, with a hand spade or fork, taking care not to skewer the onion or break off too many the hairlike roots if you want to store the onion intact.  Brush off loose dirt.  To prep for storage, please keep reading, otherwise clean well and use any way you like.

Storage onions should be harvested at the end of the season, when full growth has been reached.  This can be when the tops start flopping over, or you can do it like I do and harvest when frost threatens in fall.  Here in northeast Wisconsin, I’ve found that they usually keep just as good or better in the garden than inside, as long as it’s not a wet year.  If the soil is wet, they may start rotting, so do pay attention and watch for any trouble.  I’m usually busy earlier in the growing season scrambling to harvest and preserve everything else that needs preserving, so onions are one of the last crops to come in.  Waiting to harvest usually means that there’s not much left to the tops of the onions, so braiding is not an option.  If you want to try making an onion braid, pull them up while the tops are still intact.

How to Cure Onions

When the onions are pulled from the soil, the outer skin is often tender and moist.  This can lead to mildew and rot in storage.  To prepare onions for storage, they should be cured.  Curing is simply the process of drying the outer layers of the onion, to make them more durable and less likely to rot or mildew.  If the weather is good, you could pull them and leave them in them spread in the garden to dry for up to a week.  My preference is to place them in a shed, garage, covered porch or other well-ventilated area (I use our greenhouse), spread out on a flat surface out of direct sunlight.  As I mentioned, I spread ours in our greenhouse, and cover them with a sheet of burlap to keep the sun off.  They will smell strongly of onions, so good ventilation is key not just for drying, but for venting the fumes.

Once they are completely dry, you can wipe off any dirt and really loose outer layers of skin (leave some skin on for protection and to keep the onions from drying out too much).  Trim tops to about one inch above the bulb, or leave intact for braising (see below).

How to Store Onions

There are a number of ways to store your onions once they are cured.

Optimal storage conditions for onions are:

• Cool and dry
• 32 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit ideal
• 60 to 70 percent relative humidity

These are optimal, but onions are fairly forgiving.

The main criteria to look for to make your onions last are:

• Good air circulation
• Away from direct heat
• Away from apples or other fruit that outgas a lot of ethylene gas, which will cause sprouting

To store cured onions “as is” try:

Open Bins:  I keep mine in open bins in the root cellar.  That way I can easily spot if any start to go bad or sprout and use them first.  You could use mesh baskets, wooden crates from clementines, planting trays, bushel baskets – whatever you have available.  Don’t stick them in a plastic tub with a lid and no airflow.

Mesh Bags: Save and reuse bags from store onions or citrus and hang your onions up out of the way

Used Pantyhose:  A classic onion storage method that I have never tried, as I rarely wear pantyhose and I used my old ones to tie up tomatoes.  Maye C.  shared her technique on the Common Sense Homesteading Facebook page.

Collect lots of used pantyhose. Any full length size. Ask at church or friends.

Drop an onion in tie a knot, add another tie a knot, add another ect. ect. ect. until both legs are full. Take to storage area hang over a nail at the crotch. Then they will have good air circulation. Repeat with more hose until done.

To use, start at the toe and cut below the knot and remove the onion. Just remember to remove onions off of each leg, so it will keep hanging even on the nail.

My mother taught me this over 40 + years ago. This really saves on space. And you can keep track of usage at a glance. Also on quality if one starts to go bad you can remove it and use it quick.

Braiding:  If you have intact tops, you can braid your onions together with a piece of twine.  You want to do this before the tops are completely dry, so they they are a little more flexible.  This video demonstrates how.

Onions are about 88% water, so you should allow a day or two in a heated dehydrator at 130 to 140 degrees F.  My Excalibur recommends a temp of 125 for veggies, the American Harvest recommends 135.  Using an non-electric dryer will likely take longer.

To prepare onions for dehydrating, peel and slice or chop into pieces of uniform thickness.  No pretreatment is necessary before drying.  Thinner pieces will dry more quickly.  Slice into rings, separate and spread on your drying trays.  Alternatively, you may cut into chunks – your choice.  Think about how you are likely to use the onions after drying.  A friend shared some chopped dried onions with me a couple of years ago, and they were quite handy to toss into soups and stews.

Dry onions until leathery/brittle.  You may want to dehydrate in a garage or out of the way location, as the smell from the drying onions will be strong.

To make onion powder, simply pulverize your dried onions in a blender or food processor.  You probably only want to make some batches of powder at one time, as it will clump because it contains no anti-caking agents.

Store in an airtight container – my preferred option is vacuum sealed mason jars for longer storage.  If you want to make sure your onions (or other dried foods) are dry enough, you can get this nifty gadget called a Hygrolid hygrometer, which fits a hygrometer to check relative humidity to a wide mouth mason jar.

How to Freeze Onions

The Ball Blue Book recommend blanching your cleaned bulbs for 3 to 7 minutes until the centers are heated, then cooling and draining and packing into can-or-freeze jars (wide mouth) or plastic freezer boxes.  My brother had problems with spoilage one year due to a wet season, so he simply chopped his onions and packed them in freezer baggies in amounts that would be suitable for a single meal.  He then packed the smaller bags into one larger bag, to keep them from getting lost in the freezer and contain the odor.  (Fresh onion smell will leach through a single layer of plastic, and may give other items an “off” taste.

I’ve chopped and sauteed a mess of onions, spread them on a sheet pan to freeze, and then loose packed them or vacuum sealed them in a baggie, so I can pour out only how much I need at one time.  Pre-cooking drops the odor dramatically.  This saves times later when cooking, too, as many of my recipes start with “x” amount of sauteed onions.  Cooking before freezing knocks out the natural enzyme activity in the onions, which even in the freezer will break them down over time.  If you’re going to use them fairly quickly, it’s not much of an issue.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and are encouraged to grow some onions for storage, or pick some up at the local farmer’s market.  Don’t forget to Share or Pin for later.

You may also enjoy:

Planning for Storage Crops

Root Cellars 101

Above Ground Root Cellars – Enjoy Your Local Produce Longer

How to Grow Garlic – From Planting to Harvest

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