Onion Harvest

 Like the garlic, my onions have had a pretty good year.  I planted five varieties; two red and three yellow, most with at least 4 months storage capability.  As I did with last year's onions, as these get near the end of their storage life, I'll chop and freeze whatever we haven't eaten yet. (Side note, I still have a couple quart sized bags of chopped onions in the freezer from the 2022 crop).

After pulling the onions from the garden, I've been (almost) daily spreading them out on our covered front porch (weather and schedule permitting) so that they can dry down and cure. In the evening they get gathered up (to avoid the dampness of dew/fog in the night air) and put in the garage until morning.

It's been about two weeks since harvesting them, and at this point most of them are cured and ready to be put into the basement for storage.

There's a lot, if I had to guess, I'd say probably somewhere in the area of 150-175 pounds.  It takes a good bit (half hour?) to set them out for their daily airing, and I'm really glad that there's not so many needing it now.

The pictures that follow show what my porch looked like the first week of curing.

Redwing (L) and Highlander (R)

Yellow Spanish (foreground) and Blush (in the back)

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Patterson

Just for kicks, I looked up what current onion prices are (I haven't bought an onion in over a year).  Yellows are $1.59 each for large ones (approx. 1 pound) or $3.39 for a 3 pound bag for small ones.  Red ones are on sale right now for $1.74 each for large ones (approx. 1.25 pound according to the ad) or a 2 pound bag or smaller ones for $3.19.  

Let's do some math, estimating that I have only 150 pounds (I think there's more) of onions total, 2/3 of which are large and 1/3 are small.

50 pounds small

    25 pounds yellow x $1.13/pound = $28.25

    25 pounds red x $1.59/pound = $39.88

100 pounds large

    70 pounds yellow x $1.59 = $111.30

    30 pounds red x $1.74 = $52.20

Given those figures, hypothetical value of my crop would be $231.63

I paid $40 for my onion starts, ordered from a company I've been using for probably a decade or more.  So if we deduct that cost from the value of the crop, I'm ahead $191.63.  Not bad.