Yesterday, with the weighing of the last of the Walla Walla Sweet onions, total harvests for the year went over the 200 pound mark. It was my largest Walla Walla Sweet onion harvest year ever, at 53 pounds. It beat out 2011's 49 pounds and 2010's 45 pounds. Each year, I've purchased the same amount of plants, 2 bunches. Each bunch contains 50-55 seedlings. In 2009 I harvested just 16 pounds, from one bunch of seedlings.
Our local Fred Meyer has the onions on sale this week for 78-cents per pound, so I harvested $41.34 worth of Walla Wallas at a cost of $3.18. Not bad.
More than 30 pounds of them are headed to the garage to keep cool. We've eaten quite a few, I have several big ones in the fridge, waiting to be grilled or turned into onion rings, and I gave a whole lot of them to the kids. These are very poor keepers, so we'll be consuming a lot of onions in the next few weeks!
I still have some winter storage onions in the garden, so the total onion pounds will far exceed previous years, once those mature.
Awesome! Mine are still in mids of forming so hoping for some onions at the end but won't be anywhere like yours!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jenny.
DeleteThats a lot of Onions. They are worth more than what your think as they are Organic as well :) Congrats
ReplyDeleteTrue, Sarada, but I always try to find the local sale price on what I'm growing, at the time of harvest. Since there are no organic Walla Wallas advertised, I just took the price from the newspaper ads, which is the price I'd be paying if I had to buy them.
DeleteHeh, I calculate my produce cost backwards (cost of garden/pounds of veggies = cost per pound of veg) I'm at $15.60/lb right now, which really isn't that bad considering the heavy veggies haven't even started yet. Just factoring the onion costs, Granny got her onions for a whopping $0.06/lb! Of course there were other costs involved, but still that's pretty incredible.
DeleteAwesome harvest! That's a lot of pounds so early in the season!
ReplyDeleteNutmeg, it's ahead of 2010 and 2011, I don't have a spreadsheet on 2009, which was my biggest year. I kept a 2009 diary, so I'll have to go add up those totals.
DeleteYou can't put a price tag on onions like that. Organic. FRESH. Not treated with anti-sprouting gunk. Once again-the queen of onions.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Sue. If I had to pay organic prices on some of these veggies, I'd probably just do without! As it is, I can just eat, eat, eat to my heart's content! Anybody out there have some XL jeans they could loan me? LOL!!
Deletewow congrats on reaching 200!!! that is very exciting!
ReplyDeleteMrs. P., it's still the produce weight, not mine. But....if I don't stay out of that home made ice cream.... ;-)
DeleteWhat a wonderful harvest, Granny! I'll be dehydrating mine soon with my new dehydrator. Right now I have some peaches in it. Of course, I have nowhere near the beautiful ones you have.
ReplyDeleteLangela, I keep trying to talk myself into a dehydrator, but wonder if I'd get a lot of use from it. I hang my herbs to dry (I'm not real big on growing many). I'd really like to have dried onions on hand, but I can't think of anything else we like dried. I need a neighbor with one I can borrow!
DeleteSilly Granny! You mistakenly think you need to use it for more than one thing.
DeleteActually you can dehydrate you veggies to use in soups, etc during the winter. They take up less space than canned or frozen veggies. Mine came with yogurt cups,too. You can make your own yogurt in a dehydrator. I also look forward to making fruit leather.
Langela, I'm not a fan of fruit leather. I made a lot of it when the kids were home, never since they've left. Mr. Granny would not let yogurt touch his lips, and the price of a dehydrator would keep me in store bought yogurt for a year. Or more. It would be nice to have dried veggies for soups, but I don't think the small amount I would want would make a dehydrator very cost worthy. I'd have to completely retrain myself to cook with dried tomatoes, and I'm too darned old to do that! Of course, there is the warm sun and low humidity right out there on my patio. That's free! I don't know how great it would be for onions, but with 30+ pounds of them, I could give it a small try :-)
DeleteNice harvest. My Alicia Craigs won't make nearly that many, but then I only had about 36 of them. Some were big some were small, but none were the huge ones that Alicia Craig's seed packet claims they will be.
ReplyDeleteDaphne, I had some rather small ones, too. We also eat them as scallions and salad onions, so not all of them are left to grow full sized. It's still more than we can use, so all my kids get to share. My winter onions, the ones that I grew from seed, are too close together to grow very big. I didn't think they were going to survive, so I wasn't very careful with spacing!
DeleteWOW super! Again I have onion envy! :O) How deep do you plant your onion sets? Do you do anything after you plant them? I don't know why my onions do so poorly.
ReplyDeleteTexan, I grow these from plants, not sets. I buy them in bundles of 50-55 seedlings and trim the tops and roots a bit when I plant them. I just poke my finger down in the soil to make a hole, then plop them in and lightly push the soil back up around them. I side dress them with a bit of 10-10-10 (or whatever strength happens to be available) granular organic fertilizer once a month. And, as usual, I over water them along with everything else ;-)
DeleteCongratulations on your wonderful onion harvest! I don't think you need to worry about having to buy Xlarge jeans! You work so hard and burn it off! Nancy
ReplyDeleteLOL, Nancy! I think these 100-plus degree days we're having will burn it off!
Delete200 pounds already, I'm in awe...
ReplyDeleteAnke, I'm happy to say it's ahead of previous garden totals. I hope I can break my record of 1070 pounds this year :-)
DeleteLOVE the economics of that! DO they freeze at all? 200 lbs - wow, just wow
ReplyDeleteDavid, I do start chopping and freezing them if they begin getting soft. They do not store well at all, so we try to eat as many of them fresh as we can.
DeleteHere is an excellent onion tart recipe. We love it so much that we carmelize lots of extra sweet onions and freeze them...eating onion tarts in winter. Yum!
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't mind the link:
http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/rustic_onion_tart/
Barbee, the onions can be caramelized in the crockpot! Sounds like a good idea to me. I don't know why frozen caramelized onions wouldn't be good on lots of things, including pizza.
DeleteYou grow Granny!
ReplyDeleteYou know, so often, down here anyway, onions are on sale and I always wonder if it's worth growing your own. But I think you've shown that it is. This is going to sound weird, but I've never had garden fresh onions. I've had just about everthing else fresh from someone's garden but it seems no one ever grew onions. Do they taste as different to store bought as tomatoes do fresh vs store?
Add to this that onion tart recipe Barbee posted and between the first hand onion experience and that recipe, I want to grow onions!!!
1st. Man, I feel like the Walla Walla sweets are worth growing. They are pretty care free, and only available for such a short period. Sweet onions often go for over $1 per pound here, unless I drive over to Walla Walla and buy them by the 50 pound bag! Where I use them at all stages of growth, they are definitely worth it....just try to find a sweet green or salad onion!
DeleteGranny, you are definitely the Onion Queen!! I am growing some Walla Wallas this year. It will be interesting to see how big mine get. I think I will be lucky if they are half the size of yours.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that you hit 200 lbs already. I am way way behind you. I'm only at 80 lbs. Just wait until my tomatoes start coming in!
Robin, it's too bad I pulled so many out before they were mature, but we love the young sweet ones too.
DeleteI know you'll beat my tomato harvest, but you just wait until my winter squash starts coming in! I have cantaloupe vines all over the garden, too. If they do anything at all, there will be a lot of them. I'll be low on cucumbers and carrots though.
You are just such a gardener! It must be the good soil. Enjoy your lovely onions.
ReplyDeleteOh, I will, Stefaneener. I never thought to caramelize them and freeze them, so I'm going to try that this year.
DeleteThat's an incredible harvest for a backyard! You harvested as much in just onions as I've harvested all year so far. :P Caramelizing and freezing them sounds like a great idea. Plus, I'm sure you'll be using more than a few for making sauces and salsa and soup bases too. No doubt they will all get used up pretty quickly. Mmm, and french onion soup too!
ReplyDeleteAnywhere, I'm going to try caramelizing them in the crockpot: 3 lb. sliced onions, 1/2 cup butter, salt (if you want it). 8-10 hours on low. I guess it leaves a lot of juice, so I think I'd remove the lid and turn it to high for the last hour or so. I'll freeze portions in a muffin tin, then toss them in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Leave some in the crockpot and add beef broth, and you have onion soup.
DeleteI will try trimming the tops and roots, I have never done that. I don't usually fertilize mine either and that maybe part of my problem. I will try that too this next time! Watering is always a issue here. No chance of me over watering and that maybe part of my problem as well. I need to water more! I will try to give them more water this time as well! Thanks for the info :O). Your onions are just so pretty! :O)
ReplyDeleteTexan, I think the water and fertilizer are the answer. I trim the tops to about 3", and just trim long roots (maybe to 1/2") so they don't get all scrunched up the sides of the planting hole. Plant them on 6" centers.
DeleteWow! I have only tried onions once. Not sure why I have not tried them again. I am rethinking my garden allocation next year (less squash and more of other things!). I will have to give these a try.
ReplyDeleteWOW!
ReplyDeleteWow! Seems like just yesterday you hit the 100 lb mark and I was so proud of myself for only being a few weeks behind you... now this! I have no onions so there is no way I can keep up, beaten by a granny again this year... :) !! Congrats!
ReplyDeleteErin, now my potatoes are putting me way ahead of previous years. I need to get out there and dig them all, but it's so darned hot I don't even want to go outside. I have beans that need picking, too. They just don't want to wait until I'm ready!
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