So you’ve grown your onions and you’re delighted with an awesome yield. Now what? Here’s an easy way how to string onions for storage.
Once you’ve harvested your onion crop (which hopefully you have left to a sunny day to help with the drying process), you are on your way. They should still have roots and green/brown (that may or may not be yet wilted) stems still attached.
How to dry onions
Spread out your onions on the deck or a sunny spot for a few days to get some direct sunlight. This helps dry out the outer skin. After that take them out of direct light, but still allow them to air dry (either outside yet shaded under a cotton sheet so they can still breathe) or on an airy porch for another week or so.
When onion stems are brown and brittle, they are ready for storage.
How to string your onions
An easy and fun way to store onions, is an old traditional method of stringing. It’s really easy!
- Tie a knot in a piece of garden twine or string to create a long loop and hang it from a nail.
- Snip the brown and dried onion stems so they are approximately 15cms long.
- Hold the onion upside down so the dried stem is pointing downward. Hold the onion in one hand and with the other weave the stem in and out of the two strings created by the loop, several times.
- Gently slide the onion/weave down to bottom of the string, then allow the onion to flop downwards and it will hang securely, using gravity. If in doubt, look at the images below!
- Add another onion using the same method, and allow the onion to hang in a natural space created by the first onion. There is no science to this, other than using the onions stem and weight of the onion to hold it firmly. Repeat!
- Fill your string, then transfer to hang in the kitchen, garage, laundry or greenhouse.
Tip: the onion string will become quite heavy, quite quickly! Grade the onions so the bigger onions are at the bottom and smaller at the top. As you need them, simply snip them off as required.
