Onions Drying to Brown Time to Harvest

Harvesting onions is easy work. Watch them grow and water them until the tops fall over. When the green tops have faded to brown and the onions appear to be drying out to a tan color, it’s time to harvest.

This year the onion harvest is early for us. Usually we’ll be harvesting them in September or even October, not August.

We have to harvest when they’re ready however, or else they could rot in the garden. The torrential rains we’ve had must have toppled over their greens early. Now that the green tails have all but dried up and withered down to a small portion, we’re removing the onions from the garden.

Onions are ready to harvest as noted by their brown and withered tops.
Onions are ready to harvest as noted by their brown and withered tops.

Once the onions are lifted from the ground, and it’s really that easy, they’ll be set on newspaper to dry.

Roots can be snipped off with your fingers and the outer dirty wrapping removed also. Don’t clean the onion bulbs too good at this point. The outer wrappers will protect the juicy onions from drying out during storage.

Wait for a week or two and test whether the top near the onion itself feels moist. If the top feels like it isn’t totally dry, wait.

Wait to cut off the brown tops until they’re completely dry.

Rain Water Buckets Can Collect Mosquito Larvae

Hey Gardeners! Do you have any buckets laying around collecting rain water?

Look at what we found in the shallow seat of this chair left outside!

Water puddle in a forgotten chair was great mosquito habitat!
Water puddle in a forgotten chair was great mosquito habitat!

It would be unbelievable if I didn’t see this with my own eyes. Can you believe that all it takes is a quarter inch depth of water for mosquitoes to breed and continue their life cycle?


Video: Mosquito larvae wriggling in the shallow water of chair seat.

Adult mosquitoes mate and the female lays her eggs in groups called rafts on the surface of water. The water has to be stagnant or non-flowing for the eggs to develop properly. As long as there is a quarter-inch or more of water available to the larvae that hatch from the eggs, the baby mosquitoes will grow. Eventually, they molt enough times and attain their adult size and shape and take to the air to find mates to continue the cycle.

Mosquito-proof the areas around where you live and play outdoors by removing anything that can collect water. This means old tires, buckets, cans, bird baths – if you’re not refreshing the water daily for your feathered friends, and even old lawn furniture like our forgotten chair.

Fill in areas that usually develop into puddles to remove the mosquito habitat of standing water.