Grow Your Own Magazine

hello,
can anybody tell me if i can pull up winter japense onions now,coz somebody told me you have to wait till the green storks go brown which is about july time,do i really have to wait that long they have been in since august 2007,
they are swelling out the ground now.

Finney

Hi Finney

They're best left until they start to fade (ie: when the stalks go brown / fall over) but that doesn't mean you can't use a few in the meantime if you're short of onions and have a decent crop to get at.

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Cheers

T-lady

You can use them whenever you like but if you want to try and store them for a short time you should allow the tops to keel over and dry out before lifting.
They don't store all that well anyway, up to Christmas maybe, so I tend to use mine as I need them from now on and to store my spring planted onions!

If you're short of space this also free's up another bit of land to grow something else on!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

They don't store at all well, so dig them and use them as you need onions.

I've been using mine all winter - plant the sets close and use every other one as a spring onion, the others have got quite big now, but we are using them as and when as fresh onions. I don'y bother to store winter onions. We are pretty near the end of all of them and the first are starting to bolt, so I guess the timing is about right!

LCG

thanks all for your exellent advice

Finney