Top
  • Home
  • Shop
  • About
  • Podcast & Blog
  • Our Books
  • Projects
  • Contact
Menu

Seattle Urban Farm Company - Garden trellises and supplies

Street Address
Seattle
206.816.9740
Grow a garden you love

Your Custom Text Here

Seattle Urban Farm Company - Garden trellises and supplies

  • Home
  • Shop
  • About
  • Podcast & Blog
  • Our Books
  • Projects
    • Angeline Apartments
    • Stack House Apartments
    • Urban Fringe Farm
    • Steel + Juniper Terraced Garden
    • Quality Athletics Rooftop Restaurant Garden
    • Mercer Island Urban Farm
    • Four Season Rooftop Farm
    • Queen Anne Steel Raised Bed Garden
    • Bastille Cafe & Bar
    • Magnolia Rooftop Kitchen Garden
    • Sushi Kappo Tamura & Ravish Restaurants
    • Mercer Island Edible Garden
    • Ice Cream Shop Garden at Parfait
    • Terraced Bellevue Vegetable Garden
    • Cedar Raised Beds with Permanent Trellising
    • Meandering Stone Raised Beds
    • Madison Valley Mini-Farm
    • South Seattle Edible Landscape
    • Richmond Beach Vegetable Garden
    • Custom Fence with Grape Trellis
    • Queen Anne Backyard Oasis
    • Tall Raised Beds with Coldframes
    • Suburban Front Yard Farm
    • Capitol Hill Potager Garden
    • Terraced Rock Annual Vegetable Garden
    • Raised Bed Perennial Garden
    • Crops For Clunkers
    • SnoLEAF CASCADIA GBC GREENHOUSE COMPETITION
    • Pike Place Urban Garden
    • Seattle Design Festival Vertical Garden
    • Little Free Library
    • Portfolio
    • Colin McCrate Portfolio
    • Returns
    • Trellis pdf page
  • Contact

Episode 55: Harvest and Store Your Onions and Garlic

July 28, 2017 hilary dahl
Harvest and Store Your Garlic and Onions_Seattle Urban Farm Co.

Garlic and onions are some of the most satisfying crops you can grow in your home garden. Garlic is generally planted in the Fall, and onions are among the first transplants to be tucked into the early spring garden. These crops are both ready to harvest at the onset of peak harvest season, a harbinger of the forthcoming abundance. Luckily the crops are happy to be stored away for us to enjoy during less bounteous times of year. In this episode, we’re sharing some tips that will help you know when your crops are ready to harvest and how to store them.

HOW TO LISTEN:

  • Subscribe in iTunes (or your favorite podcast player) to have our podcasts sent directly to your device.

  • Listen right now in your browser by clicking above.

SHOW NOTES:

In this episode, we discuss:

  • What to look for to know your garlic and onions are ready to harvest

  • Harvesting methods for both garlic and onions

  • How to cure your crops for storage

  • Storage tips and lifespans

DSC_8955.jpg
harvested Garlic_-3.jpg
DSC_9805.JPG

Important Take-aways:

  • Garlic is ready to be harvested when half of the stems have turned brown (half should still be green) and started to dry out.

  • Onions are ready to harvest when the stems start to turn brown and die back. The tops will start to flop over and a portion of the bulb will usually be above the soil surface.

  • Garlic and onions are harvested by lifting entire plant out of the ground with a spade, fork or trowel (or by hand). With both crops, the less you do to the harvested plant, the longer and better they will store.

  • After harvesting, knock off any large clumps of dirt but never wash your garlic or onions with water.

  • Hang garlic in a warm, dry, dark place for several weeks to cure. After that, the garlic stalk and root can be trimmed back to so that the bulb resembles one that you would buy at the store or farmers market.

  • Cure onions in a dry sunny spot for 5-7 days. Once cured, cut back the stems to about 1 inch above the bulb.

  • Store garlic and onions in a dark, cool location such as a pantry or basement. Softneck garlic should keep all winter long, while hardneck garlic has a shorter lifespan, but, some say, a superior flavor. The storage life for onions depends on the variety. Generally, yellow types store longest, but be sure to read about the varieties you are growing, or planning to grow before deciding which ones to cook with first. If properly cured and stored, it is possible to eat bulbing onions from midsummer through the following spring.

onion floppy tops.jpg
Storage Onions_Harvested.jpg
DSC_7397.JPG

These are the reusable cotton bags I use to store my onions: 

...and a garlic growers bible: 

All Cotton and Linen
Buy on Amazon
By Ron L. Engeland
Buy on Amazon

You might also be interested in:
Episode 109: Cucumbers
Oct 19, 2021
Episode 109: Cucumbers
Oct 19, 2021
Oct 19, 2021
Fall 2021 New Season Preview Mini-Episode!
Sep 30, 2021
Fall 2021 New Season Preview Mini-Episode!
Sep 30, 2021
Sep 30, 2021
fall beets and carrots_Seattle Urban Farm Co_Hilary Dahl
Jul 1, 2020
Mid-Summer Succession Planting
Jul 1, 2020
Jul 1, 2020

Like what you hear? Please share our podcast with a friend. Subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast player so you never miss a beat. And we'd really appreciate you showing us some love by leaving a rating and review on iTunes. 


Featured
Hilary Dahl
Hilary Dahl

Hilary Dahl is a co-owner of Seattle Urban Farm Company and host of the Encyclopedia Botanica podcast. Since 2010 Hilary Dahl has been helping beginning and experienced growers create beautiful and productive gardens. She has the unique experience of working in on a wide range of projects, from small backyard garden plots to multi-acre vegetable farms. She also works in her own garden every day after work. Hilary is also the creator of our podcast, the Encyclopedia Botanica, which she started as a way to share effective and efficient garden management techniques, and as a way to spread her love of growing food and flowers!

Colin McCrate
Colin McCrate

Colin McCrate has been growing food organically for over 25 years. He worked on a variety of small farms in the Midwest before moving to the west coast in 2003 to teach garden-based environmental education. He founded the Seattle Urban Farm Company in 2007 with the goal of applying years of horticultural and agricultural expertise to help aspiring growers get projects off the ground or more accurately; in the ground.

Since starting Seattle Urban Farm Co in 2007, he has helped guide hundreds of urban farmers through the design, construction and management of their own edible landscape. Colin is the author of three books; Food Grown Right, In Your Backyard(Mountaineers Books, 2012) and Grow More Food (Storey Publishing, 2022); and is a garden writer for the Seattle Times.

In Annual Vegetables, Podcast, Summer, Harvesting Tags Encyclopedia Botanica, Podcast, gardening podcast, onions, growing garlic, growing onions, organic garden, vegetable gardening, organic gardening, growing alliums, garlic
← Episode 56: Late Blight Episode 54: Fall Brassicas →
The Freyr garden trellis by Seattle Urban Farm Co
All Posts By Topic
  • Annual Vegetables 123
  • Podcast 85
  • Spring 36
  • Summer 26
  • Fall 25
  • Garden Planning 23
  • Garden Design 20
  • Harvesting 19
  • Seattle Urban Farm Co 18
  • Winter 18
  • Flowers 14
  • Soil Care 14
  • Crop Planning 11
  • Drip Irrigation 11
  • Organic Pest Control 11
  • Freyr trellis 8
  • Container gardening 7
  • Fruit Trees 7
  • Organic Fertilizer 7
  • The Urban Fringe Farm 7
  • Herbs 6
  • Perennial Vegetables 6
  • Pollinators 5
  • Bees 4
  • Berries 4
  • Crop Storage 4
  • Microgreens 4
  • Farmers 3
  • Our Friends 3
  • Projects 3
  • Chickens 2
  • 2025 events 1
  • Crop Diseases 1
  • In The Press 1
  • Question of the Month 1
  • Seed Starting 1

Our Books:

By McCrate, Colin, Halm, Brad
Order the Freyr trellis today!

Follow Us on Instagram


Featured
DSC_9353.JPG
Apr 10, 2025
How to grow tomatoes
Apr 10, 2025
Apr 10, 2025
Harvesting-homegrown-zucchini-off-of-the-Freyr-vegetable-garden-trellis.jpg
Oct 30, 2023
Crops you'll love to grow on the Freyr trellis!
Oct 30, 2023
Oct 30, 2023
Drip Irrigation How-To, Part 2
Oct 6, 2023
Drip Irrigation How-To, Part 2
Oct 6, 2023
Oct 6, 2023

Contact | Projects | Trellis Guide | About | Podcast | Our Books | Shop | Resources | Wholesale

seattle urban farm company
Address: 4511 Shilshole Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107
farmers@SeattleUrbanFarmCo.com
206.816.9740

Featured in

Screen Shot 2019-04-11 at 2.13.41 PM.png
Screen Shot 2019-04-11 at 2.13.56 PM.png
Screen Shot 2019-04-11 at 2.14.09 PM.png
Screen Shot 2019-04-11 at 2.18.29 PM.png
Screen Shot 2019-04-11 at 2.20.19 PM.png

© Copyright 2024 – Seattle Urban Farm Company. All Rights Reserved.