How to grow and preserve onions

As you probably have figured out by now, I love to grow a nice sized garden.  It's a great feeling to grow and preserve your own food.  It gives you that feeling of being at least a little self sufficient.  As you also know I highly recommend using chicken manure on your garden.  before we started the chicken farm I would use horse manure and I can tell you from experience it doesn't work even half as good as chicken manure.
I like to plant lots of onions, there are so many ways to use them.  While they are still small I use them as green onions on salads.  As they get bigger they are great to use in stir fry, fajitas, on a pot roast....you get the idea.

 

 

I begin to use the green onions when they get just a little bigger than this photo but you really can use them at this size.  There is a tick to growing onions that I learned from a lady a long time ago.  When your ready for your onions to get bigger you need to keep the soil some what loose around the onions and as they grow start pulling the dirt away from them.  As they grow they will look like they're just sitting on top of the ground and only the roots are in the dirt.

 

I pulled all of the onions a couple of weeks ago and they filled my wheel barrow.  Now what to do with all those onions.

 

 

I used a wire frame that we cover chick brooder boxes and set it on top of the wooden box.  After a couple of days I decided to move them into the shade to dry and set the wire frame up on saw horses.  I think the hot sun was going to cook them, so don't sit them in the sun.  Sitting them on saw horses or whatever else you have, allows air circulation for the green part of the onion to die and dry.

 

 

The green of the onion dries and withers pretty quick.  Allow them to fully dry.

 

 

Once you think the onion tops have dried enough you will trim the tops off with scissors.

 

 

Next trim off the root end.

 

 

Rub off the excess dirt and your done.

 

 

Onion sets are inexpensive to buy, you can plant onions in a small space and with very little work you can have enough onions to last all winter.

To store your onions you can place them in a box but don't stack them deep, really just 2 layers stacked loosely.  Keep in a cool spot.

If you have some good tips, leave us a comment, it might be helpful to other readers.