July marked the end of my first harvest of onions and garlic in my little veg plot. Last year, in about October, I bought a few bags of onion sets and a ‘garlic lovers collection’ which included 4 different types of garlic from one of the seed companies in the UK (I honestly don’t remember which one!). I chose red and white onions as I love them both in equal measure – again, I have no clue what they were. I must try to pay more attention to these things. Maybe I need a notebook? I planted them out, in the rain, into the cold wet raised beds with the help of a random stick to make the little holes. It was a messy task but you know what? I was in my element!
My plan was to just get them in and see what happened. We go through tons of onions in our cooking all through the year and I am constantly buying garlic either fresh, frozen, or little jars of powder.
Anyway, I kept on planting until they were all in the ground. They took up three and a half… THREE and a HALF of my raised beds in space!! I only have eight raised beds to begin with. I think I severely miscalculated how many onions and I would actually get through, though? Or maybe I am just well prepared? I guess we will only know next time harvest comes around if I need to buy any in the meantime…
They have been growing really well over the past nine months and I have been really excited to start pulling them up. I started to get really resentful about 3 months ago when I kept having to buy garlic and onions at the store, considering I had a garden full of them that were just not quite ready at home! But I waited (somewhat) p.a.t.i.e.n.t.l.y.
Over the last month or two I have been stealing the odd onion leaf to chop up in salads or to sprinkle in cream cheese – which has been absolutely delicious by the way and I whole heartedly encourage you to do the same. Then I had the bright idea to use the leaves to dehydrate and save as onion leaf powder (Making Onion powder from onion leaves). I am trying to be more mindful about what I waste and I am also reluctant to throw away good and edible food that I have spent actual months growing and harvesting. Over the last few years have been researching and learning how to preserve my own food. Until getting my own growing space I had no clue that things like onion leaves, the greens from your brassicas, carrot tops etc… are all edible! I think I just figured if you didn’t see it in the veg aisle you shouldn’t be eating it. I was wrong. You can eat these things, and they are bloody delicious! This journey is becoming a real (and welcome) eye opener for me.
However, you should definitely do your own research before nibbling on just ‘anything’ in your garden because some things are poisonous or will give you a poorly belly – and you should absolutely only get your information from reliable resources. Don’t just take my word for it or some random TikToc account…though I have done tons of research before putting anything on my or my loved ones’ plates! A really good place to start is the USDA website in the United States and the Ball books of home preserving. In the UK, we don’t really have the same culture of preserving our food and I am yet to find good reliable UK sources of info. So for me these resources this is my first port of call. Please do leave a comment below if you have other reliable sources – I’d love to take a look.
Then, at the end of June, all of my onions started flopping over. As they flopped, I left them a week or so and then started to pull them up. I popped them on a spare pallet to dry for a few days as the weather here has been lovely and dry. When the rains were forecast, I bunched them up and stored them in the shed.
I think I might have planted some of the sets a little too deeply. I had to dig around for them and as you can see below, one of them had started trying to grow its way to Australia…it came out more like a worm than an onion. I’d like to say it was delicious. it wasn’t. It was tough and nasty.
I did the same with my garlic. It seems I planted 3 hardneck varieties and 1 softneck. The hardneck ones grew some beautiful scapes and I harvested those bad boys and turned them into garlic scape pesto and stored in the freezer. I’ll add a post about what I have been preserving so far really soon. Once I had 3/4 dead leaves I pulled them up. a few had started to open so maybe I left them too long in the ground? Two varieties produced absolutely rubbish bulbs – they are delicious but they really are quite tiny. However, two performed really rather well. I will be saving the biggest and best bulbs to plant back out in October for a crop next year. That’s one thing I am really looking forward to – saving my seed so I don’t have to purchase every year. Hello self sufficiency!
The process of preserving what I have grown has begun already. I have been drying the onions and garlic off in the shed for storage into the winter. However, I am an absolute sucker for buying pre-prepared veggies. I always have frozen onions and garlic and pots of granules too…so this year I am making my own!
