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Today, many owners of household and summer cottages are engaged in growing onions for turnips. Subject to the rules of agricultural technology, you can get a rich harvest of tasty and healthy vegetables. Unfortunately, part of the crop becomes unusable after harvesting. Isn’t it a shame, because so much work was invested!
The most common cause of crop loss is an unripe or overripe vegetable. Novice gardeners are often interested in the timing of harvesting turnip onions. Note that this is a very important point. Onion harvested in time can be stored all winter, and your family will be provided with a vitamin and healthy vegetable.
Deciding on deadlines
Why is it important to choose bulbs from the garden in a timely manner? The fact is that when choosing the wrong harvesting time, the vegetable begins to rot in the ground. Harvested onions, no matter how well dried, cannot be stored for a long time.
Not a single gardener will be able to name exactly when to dig up a turnip, no matter how rich experience in growing a plant he may have. First, it will depend on the region of residence. Secondly, from what material the vegetable was grown. After all, you can get large bulbs from sevka, grown seedlings or by sowing seeds directly into the ground.
Let’s say that the seedlings or seedlings were planted in the ground in early May, which means that harvesting can be done by the end of July, the beginning of August. Onions planted in late April should be dug at the end of July. The timing of harvesting turnips grown from seeds will be different. The main thing is to harvest without loss of quantity and quality.
Onion cleaning:
Gardeners with more experience know when to dig up onions from the ground, as they have quite a few secrets.
Focus on external signs
So, when to harvest onions, what you need to pay attention to.
During the summer, the feathers are juicy, green. Over time, when a turnip is poured into the ground, they begin to change their color. Gardeners should carefully monitor these changes, because the plant gives a signal of maturation:
- Stems dry up and turn yellow.
- The neck of the bulb becomes thinner, softer, begins to dry out.
- Feathers do not stand upright, but lie on the bed.
- You can check the readiness of onions for harvesting by the scales. Pull out the onion: if they are dry and rustling, easily removed – the time for harvesting the onion has come.
Mathematics is indispensable
Not all gardeners are satisfied with the method of determining the harvesting period by external changes. After all, the cause of yellowing and lodging of feathers can be not only the ripeness of the vegetable, but also other reasons. Therefore, they call on mathematics to help and believe that in this case it is almost impossible to make a mistake with cleaning.
Growing onions for many years, gardeners have noticed that they ripen somewhere in 70 days after planting.
It turns out that planted on May 20, the vegetable is ready for harvest on the first of August.
Do not forget that in terms of ripening, a vegetable can belong to early, middle or late varieties. This is also an important fact that affects the question of when to dig onions.
It should be noted that the number 70 is the same for any variety of onion. When gardeners buy bags of seeds, they often say that it takes 68 to 83 days to ripen. We recommend beginner gardeners to focus on the average – 70-75 days, you can never go wrong.
Climate important
More than once, gardeners have complained that the climate in Our Country has changed dramatically. This also affects the choice of the turnip digging period. Summer does not fall on summer: one year is dry, hot, which contributes to the acceleration of maturation. Another year, on the contrary, can be rainy and cool, therefore, onions are harvested later.
It turns out that even the most experienced gardener who knows the basics of agricultural technology will not give a single answer to the question often asked by beginners when to collect onions from the garden. After all, the timing of cleaning depends on many factors that must be considered:
- region of residence;
- spring planting time
- used planting material;
- climatic features of spring and summer in the current year;
- onion varieties by ripening;
- correct application of agricultural technology.
It will not work to harvest the entire crop of even one variety at the same time, because they ripen unevenly, to say nothing of different varieties. Experienced gardeners choose bulbs as they ripen. That is why the recommendations do not give the exact number of days needed to grow this vegetable.
Onion harvesting rules
The timing of digging onions is associated with the rules of harvesting. The fact is that 2 weeks before the planned work, you need to stop watering the beds. This is one of the important agrotechnical requirements. The onion must stop growing to absorb the nutrients from the green stem.
Watering before harvesting reduces the keeping quality of the vegetable, leading to the development of putrefactive processes. In addition, due to watering, the onion will not have time to reach marketable condition. The rains that began during the turnip drying period also have a negative effect on the safety of the vegetable.
When the approximate time for digging the bulbs out of the ground is scheduled, it is necessary to carefully monitor the condition of the stem in the remaining period before harvesting. In a well-ripened bulb, it will be soft. But overdrying the base of the stem before harvesting should not be. In this case, the taste of the onion deteriorates.
Knowing when to dig onions for a turnip is also important because you have to choose a sunny day for harvesting. In order for the vegetable to be well stored, it must be roasted in the sun.
For digging, it is better to take a pitchfork, not a shovel, so as not to damage the bulbs. It is not always possible to pull out a turnip just like that, without damaging the stem. The harvested crop is laid out in the garden for the whole day in one layer. In the same way, the bulbs are laid out for major drying. Then the stem is cut off.
If the rains charged at the time when you need to collect the turnip, you do not need to postpone work until later. We remove the onion from the ground as quickly as possible, otherwise, under the influence of excess moisture, it will begin to germinate and rot already in the ground. In this case, the turnip will have to be dried under a well-ventilated canopy, and at the first opportunity, take the bulbs out into the street.
When and how to harvest onions, tips:
Summary
As you can see, the question of when to harvest bulbs grown on a turnip is really solvable. We have pointed out the important points that you need to pay attention to. Gardeners, even beginners, can calculate harvest times. The main thing is the implementation of agricultural cultivation techniques, proper care for planting onions. And the crop harvested on time will be stored all the long winter. A tasty and healthy vegetable is needed at this time to maintain immunity.