If you grow your own onions, you know they are easy to grow.  Around here, you put your sets in on Good Friday.  Then in July you can pick an onion out of your garden as you please.  As your onions grow, some will shoot up a hard stem and a bloom.  What is that?  Why do they do that?    This picture is an example of an onion that sent up a bloom.   My grandma has told me to not let them bloom so I will pinch it off.  The onions that do send up that hard shoot are sort of a pain in the butt.  They don’t produce a good sized onion and I don’t think there is much you can do about it.  I guess just hope they don’t all do it.  I had a few that were that way.  I have heard that you are supposed to eat those first.  They do not keep.

When your onion stems start to lay down (on their own, not because you just got a big storm)  they are done growing.  We have had a very dry season so I didn’t really see the problem with leaving them in the ground to cure for a while until I was ready to deal with them.  Yesterday, I pulled them, and now I am letting them dry for a few days or a week or so.  I will keep my eye on them.  I actually tried the braiding and hanging technique.  They are on my porch out of the sun.  I am just hoping that when people drive by they don’t think this is my idea of cool porch decor.

The Farm Wife