Over the past few days, I have been lifting onions. Lifting them out of the ground that is.

This years onions were grown from sets – two varieties: Sturon, “a globe onion with large bulbs excellent for long term storage. Very uniform and with a good skin quality and crisp flesh”, quoting the seed catalogue and, Red Baron, “Very attractive red skinned onions with a pink and white flesh. Use fresh or for short term storage.” I am pretty pleased with the results – most of the onions are of a good size and quality, and the smaller ones are of a very usable size.

The onions lay in the sun for a few hours to help dry the skins. Then they were laid out in the polytunnel to continue drying. As I get time, they will be bunched into 1kg lots and hung from the crop bars inside the tunnel. This will aid the drying process and help them to store longer. The Red Baron will be sold as fresh onions as red onions generally don’t store for very long. They are great sliced an eaten raw in salads, or cooked in the normal way.

Coincidentally, or perhaps as directed by Mother Nature, now is also the time to sow overwintering onions. These are sown from seed (specific varieties for autumn sowing) into seed trays lined with 40 cell inserts, 2 seeds per cell. I am growing 2 varieties, Senshyu, “Open polinated, with straw coloured skins, slightly elongated globe shape” and, F1 Sonic, “Vigorous variety, very early to mature, semi globe shaped bulbs with straw coloured skin of medium thickness – excellent taste.”

These will grow on in their cells until early spring, where they will be planted either in beds in the tunnel, or, if the spring is kind, into the open soil outside. These onions will be ready to lift in June, just as the Sturon onions in store are finishing. Then, you have guessed it, I will plant Sturon onion sets in the spring to be ready once the overwintering ones are done.

This is surely better than concentrating on monocrop onions, where storage and thick skins for transportation are more important than flavour, and fly them vast distances to a depot to then be trucked across the country to a store?…biased as I am….