Planting Onion Sets

Usually I’ll plant a total of 5 to 6 dozen of various types of onions for the planting season.  This season, I’ve only planted 2 rows of the same onion, Texas Sweet.  

Planting onion sets are pretty basic.  You need to make sure you have a really good soil mixture to include (of course soil), compost and peat.  

Create nice neat furrows (a long narrow trench) for the amount of onions you wish to plant. Once you’ve created nice furrows, make sure to soak water in each furrow.

Then poke holes in the soil with your finger (not too deep) every 4 to 5 inches.

Place an onion set in each hole, gradually pinch soil around the base of the onion set.  

Water consistently, and within a couple of months you’ll have beautiful onions to harvest and put up with your preps.

What's That Smell??

Now that my onions have cured properly, it’s that time to figure out how I would like to save them.

I sorted through my onions and determined I’m going to save about ½ of my onions for storage, ¼ for freezing and canning (marmalade and caramelized), and the remaining ¼ will be dehydrated.

This weekend, Bulldog Man and I decided to start dehydrating the onions.  Warning, before cutting a large quantity of onions, please make sure to wear gloves, and eye protection.   Also don’t dehydrate onions inside your home!!!!

I’m here to tell you, do not dehydrate onions inside your home, the smell is overpowering and it will stay for days. We started with 8, which is the amount that would fill the dehydrator.  

I brushed the remaining soil off each onion, chopped the ends, and peeled away the outer skin.  Then I handed each onion off to Bulldog Man to slice thinly on my Mandolin. 

After slicing, we pulled apart the sliced pieces and laid them out on each dehydrating tray. 

Using an extension cord, we plugged in the dehydrator and sat it outside on top of the gas stove (a future project….we will touch basis on this in a future post) to start the dehydration process. 

The dehydration process took approximately 12 to 14 hours.  OMG…….

Talk about ode de onion smell………………..

You could smell onions for miles.  While working outside in the garden and on other projects, you would have thought onion rings were cooking…..Very strong onion rings!!! 

After the onions finished dehydrating, we placed them in quart canning jar and vacuum canned each jar, for using in future meals throughout the year. 

I processed one jar of dehydrated onion pieces through a coffee bean grinder and made onion powder (spice) for using on roasts, or in meals where you would like the flavor of the onion but not the onion.  

** An electronic tool is not necessary to make onion powder.  A mortar and pestle will do the same. 

***To remove the onion smell from your hands wash them with salt and warm water.  Or soak hands in either lemon juice or vinegar for approximately 2 to 3 minutes, then wash normally.

Have you ever made onion powder yourself before?