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Vegetable Gardening

First time onion and garlic grower - questions

14 years ago

How do I tell when they are ready? I can see the bulbs on all the onions and some of the garlic. I read somewhere to cut off the bloom stalk and only one onion has one going up, not blooming though. I also read that it was time to dig them when the leaves started yellowing. Also, as the bulbs start showing above ground, I covered them with cedar mulch to keep them from burning. Is that ok?

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Comments (4)

chacethegnomer
14 years ago
I know that you should cut off the blooms on your garlic. The bloom uses energy that is taken away from the bulb. I live in Maine and I alway cover my garlic with hay for the winter so i am not sure about the cedar mulch. I believe that you can harvest garlic or onion when the outer leaves yellow but we did not harvest most of our onions until the stalks had fallen over. We then pulled them up and left them out to dry. We picked onions as needed until fall so my opinion is that if they have some size to them pick and enjoy. I have never healed in my onions so i cant speak to that.
brass_tacks
14 years ago
Marti,
As long as the soil around the onions don't stay wet, it is ok to leave the onions in the ground past when they are ready to remove. I mulch my onions to help retain the moisture since we have had a drought-like spring. The only onions that became soft were the ones that didn't have a good drain trench (I had to water).
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I cut the stalks off my elephant garlic before it could flower, which is supposed to make the plant put more energy into forming the bulb. Maybe this is why your bulbs ended up small. The immature flower stalk is tasty in stir fry. I'm afraid your replanted bulb might not make it since when you dug it up, you probably tore off most of the roots. You should probably leave the rest of the plants in the ground until they are more mature. The little bulblets can be planted, but it takes longer for them to grow than the cloves from the main bulb. I'm saving mine and will plant them, but will probably eat them as green garlic. Keep in mind that elephant garlic is not a true garlic but is actually in the same species as leeks. If you leave leeks in the ground long enough, they will also make similar bulblets around the base of the main stalk. You might want to read up on leeks to see what to do with those seeds. I have never heard of people planting elephant garlic seeds, but if you want to try maybe you can treat them the same way as leek seeds.
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TxMarti
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks brass tacks. I dup up the one with the bloom tonight and it was small, about the size of a golf ball. I can see the tops of other bulbs that are much bigger.
anney
14 years ago
marti8a

I set my three varieties of onion transplants out (in containers) on March 7. They had general DTMs of 100 and 110 days, but they didn't last quite that long! I have begun harvesting them from the containers where they all have fallen over, even though some of the tops are still green. I think you can just leave them there longer than that but need to pull them when the neck right next to the bulb is still solid to feel but above that, it's soft. Below is a picture of about half the onions I planted, curing out on the deck under an overhang. They still have a way to go for the leaves to become all brown. And they sure have lots of roots! I also plan to spread them out more today after I find something else to set them on under the overhang so the air can reach all of them.

I'm leaving the others (yellow onions) in the soil for now since not all of them have fallen over and the tops haven't started browning. They're much larger than these, most double this size.

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