Ok, so I've got my stripey jersey and my beret, I've sent one of the lads out to nick a pushbike, and I'm practising my best 'Ello 'Ello accent. I also have my first ever eight strings of onions that are currently hanging from all sorts of strange places having been strung this morning before the rain set in.
I have three possible places to hang them up.....
The potting shed - dry, gets quite hot in the sun, but I don't need the onions banging about my head every time I go in there, and it gets very cold and damp in winter;
The conservatory - quite sunny in the mornings, gets a good draught through it (next year it's getting rebuilt!) so it can be pretty chilly in winter, but I don't want to leave the onions there if I can help it;
The garage - dry, no direct sunlight (in fact, gloomy most of the time), stays above freezing in winter.
I think I should hang them in the conservatory for a while to fully dry out, then store them in the garage, but I'm not sure. What does the panel think?
Sounds the best option to me. I will be storing my onions in my detached garage, which does get cold in the winter, but is the only choice that I have.
for the last three or four years i´ve kept my onions and shallots in the garden hut. they survived frosts up to - 12 C and stayed sweet and crisp till april.
Hi all, :D
Definitely store in the garage, but I don`t think you should string them together until they are fully dry. Do this on trays or a tiered vegetable rack, somewhere warm & preferably sunny. Apparently the more baking they get from the sun before storing the better. Oh & rather than stringing I use my wifes old tights, cut into single legs you understand. 8)
Adrian.
I hung mine up in the shed but I used nylon string which cut into the necks of the onion and then they started to rot :( I tied them too far near the bulb as well which didn't help. All that hard work to grow them and then I was killing them off due to my own daftness :)
Quote from: adrianhumph on August 14, 2005, 09:25:32
Hi all, :D
       Definitely store in the garage, but I don`t think you should string them together until they are fully dry.
                               Adrian.
I did leave them lying on the soil for over a week, so they dried off quite well (I strung them on Sat morning as we were due for rain in the afternoon). There was still a fair bit of moisture in the neck, but almost all of the foliage had died off to a flakey dry autumn-kind-of leaf. I figured if I didn't string them when I did, there would be no stem left to actually tie them with (in fact a lot of the onions are on a drying rack in the garage because there was nothing to tie them with!).
I believe it's best not to store them in the dark, otherwise they start sprouting or producing roots (can't remember which - maybe both!). So if your garage doesn't have windows you might want to rethink ...
I store mine in an attached garage hanging from the ceiling in old metal hanging flower baskets. You can get these from any dump as people tend to throw them away at the first sign of rust. Mine kept till May this year.