Page 12 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2023

garden scissors, any split skins removed and then washed before drying in front of an electric fan in Mum and Dad’s garage. As the class was for under 250g onions, there was regular measuring done ahead of harvest to estimate when they would be closest to the 250g mark. This is a photo
of an onion that was just over the 250g mark when lifted, but we generally find that onions and shallots lose a little weight as they dry out, so there would still have been a chance at exhibition for this one.
Here’s a photo of a winning set of Red
Rover onions that Mum and Dad exhibited at the RHS Show at Hyde Hall in October 2022.
Those that were grown for eating (both in our garden and at Mum and Dad’s) were left in the garden for a bit longer so they could bulk up further and produce a greater weight of onion for use in the kitchen. Again, when ready to harvest (which we tend to find is when the leaves have folded over and started to die back) we lifted each bulb and then strung these up under cover to dry out. For this purpose, we didn’t trim
back the leaves or the roots, just left the whole onion to dry naturally.
Fast forwarding to January of 2023, you can see that the onions are not only good for exhibition, but also keep well. The final photo is some of the onions which we have been storing over the winter which are still sound and ready to eat when we get round to it. As you can hopefully see from the scales, the largest one we got to grow in the garden before we harvested was about 13 and a half ounces!
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12 Simply Vegetables