When to remove onion sets from the garden for storage and how to save until spring?

Many summer residents determine the period when to store onion sets from the garden by experience. This is due to the fact that the duration of the ripening of a vegetable may vary depending on weather conditions, the planted variety, and the provision of certain care. Learning how to determine if a crop is ready for harvest is the main goal of onion sets growers, as this material will be used next season to produce turnips. If the bulbs are not mature enough or overripe in the garden, they will become unsuitable for further planting.

How to determine the ripeness of onions and speed up their ripening?

To determine when to harvest onions, you need to know the signs of a fully ripe set. Experienced summer residents claim that the sevok is ripe if:

the pen began to take on a yellowish tint, to dry out;
planting begins to sink into the soil;
onion neck thinner.

When the indicated signs of seed maturation appear, it can be removed from the garden.

Preparing for cleaning

After determining the term for harvesting onions, it should be prepared for this procedure. Before harvesting, you should refuse to water the plantings, as it is recommended to harvest when the soil is dry. Next, you should calculate the date so that it falls on sunny days. If the weather is damp, it is raining, the harvest must be postponed, as the crop may rot when the raw bulb is removed.

Sevka should be harvested by digging it out of the ground. This must be done very carefully, as damaged bulbs will not only be poorly stored, but will also become unsuitable for planting. Digging takes place along with the pen. The earth is gently wiped from the head. It is impossible to shake off the soil, as damage may appear on the surface of the onion, which will adversely affect the shelf life. After harvesting the entire crop, it should be spread out on the beds to dry.

If harvesting was carried out in the morning, when dew accumulates on the surface of the soil, the unfolded crop must be covered with a film. If the future planting material was grown in the middle lane, and the weather is cloudy, and sunny days will not appear soon, onions should be dried under a canopy.

In order for the crop to be well stored, it is necessary to observe other conditions for harvesting it from the garden. This applies to the choice of weather, pruning, watering.

What weather to start cleaning?

Many summer residents are interested in the question of what weather to start harvesting the seedlings? In order for the sevok to have good keeping quality, it must be harvested only in dry weather. If sunny days are not planned, it is allowed to harvest the ripened crop in cloudy weather, while the onion will need to be thoroughly dried. To do this, the dug out vegetable can be laid out in the fresh air under a canopy, placed in an attic with good ventilation or using an oven heated to the minimum temperature.

Cutting

In order not to damage the sevoc during harvest, its feathers will need to be thinned out before digging. To do this, cut off the extra feathers.

How to prune onions after harvesting from the garden? Immediately after digging, the vegetable, along with the green part, is laid out on the beds.After that, the feathers are trimmed, leaving a 5-centimeter tip. In addition to feathers, the roots are also trimmed. Cropped and dried crops can be stored in wooden boxes, stockings or tied into braids.

There are several ways to weave onions, each of which is suitable for storage and sets. In this case, pruning should be done, leaving leaves 8-10 centimeters long.

Some summer residents do not cut feathers until late autumn, winter, but this will only complicate the storage of the crop, reduce its keeping quality. Therefore, cutting feathers and roots is required immediately after harvesting the seedlings from the garden.

When to stop watering?

To bring the ripening period closer, you need to stop watering a few days before the start of harvest. If the seedlings are grown in the middle lane, watering should be abandoned in the last decade of July. At this time, the aerial part of the set is formed, and in the absence of watering, the bulb growth process is activated.

This feature is due to the fact that when the soil is moistened, the bulb directs all its forces to the growth of greenery, and the head plunges into a state of rest. If the soil dries up, the processes change places. In other areas, it is recommended to stop watering the set 2 weeks before harvest.

When the bulbs are actively formed, they will release arrows that need to be removed. To do this, the arrow is cut off at the root. Otherwise, the harvested crop cannot be stored until the next planting season.

Cleaning dates

To determine the timing of harvesting a set, it is necessary to take into account the average period of its ripening, which is equal to 70 days. Most often, onions ripen in August-September. Also, when determining the timing of onion harvesting, the time of planting, the peculiarity of growing plantings, affects. It is also required to take into account the region in which the onion was grown.

In the Urals or in Siberia there is no way to predict summer weather. If it turned out to be hot, the onion will ripen on time, and if it is cool, it will take more time to ripen. In these regions, heads should be dug after the green part of the plant has dried, and its neck has thinned.

When these signs appear, you need to harvest within 1 week, if you skip this period, the plant will form new roots. Such material will not be suitable for storage. If you start harvesting earlier, the husk will not appear on the set, and the neck will not have time to become thinner. Such seed will not be suitable for further planting.

Lunar calendar

Some experienced summer residents are sure that the best way to determine the optimal time for harvesting a set is to use the lunar calendar. It helps to calculate favorable lunar phases for harvesting in relation to sevka and other garden crops.

In the absence of a lunar calendar, some summer residents recommend turning to the luminary itself. So, you can get a good harvest if you start harvesting the sevka on the full moon. Harvesting this way allows the vegetable to have the most nutritional value.

At the same time, any day indicated in the lunar calendar should be dry, if it rains, it is recommended to postpone digging until the next favorable date.

Country hack

Some gardeners are convinced that its keeping quality depends on how the sevok was dug out. There are a number of life hacks that allow you to carefully extract the crop from the soil, preserve its quality and shelf life:

It is best to dig up a vegetable in the morning, as it is at this time that the soil is as loose as possible.
To avoid damaging the heads, forks should be used. If the bulb was damaged during harvesting, it should be consumed.
Pulling onions from the soil, open ground is allowed only when it rained before harvesting, softening the soil. When pulling a vegetable out of dry ground, the stem breaks, causing the head to rot quickly.
For growing sevka, you should use the best varieties with good keeping quality. Hybrid varieties are not suitable for seed production.
You can harvest turnips before the first frosts, which occur in August-September in different regions.

If the above rules are observed, the collected seedlings will be perfectly stored until the next sowing season. Also, special attention should be paid to drying onions.

Drying

To answer the question of how to store onion sets before planting, you need to know not only its storage methods, but also preliminary preparation, which consists in drying.Drying sevka takes 2-3 weeks. During this time, the bulbs absorb all the nutrients from the green mass, and their scales dry out.

Drying sets consists in spreading the crop on a dry surface in a thin layer. Periodically, the onion is turned over so that it dries evenly.

In order for the bulbs to dry, it is necessary to provide several stages of drying. The first of these is drying in the garden. This stage lasts only 1-2 days. Then the crop is laid on the veranda, attic or in another ventilated area. Onions are stored there for 2 weeks. After that, the roots are cut off, the feathers of the onion are cut off - the feather and roots are thrown away, and the onion is sent to a room with a temperature of 25-30 degrees for a couple of days.

What to do if the sevok rots? In this case, spoiled bulbs should be thrown away, and the rest of the crop should be dried in an oven at 40 degrees for several minutes.This treatment will increase the keeping quality of the set, destroy all pathogenic bacteria, and the onion can be stored until the next sowing season.