July todo: harvest onions

Walla walla grown at The Orchard in North Las Vegas.
Both northern and southern onions can be grown here well.

Check onions. Onions do remarkably well in our climate. They like to have soil that is well drained, free from large rocks and relatively sandy. Transplants are normally planted around March 15 year. If you decide to start onions from seed and grow your own transplants, you would do this about the same time you plant garlic; late September and October.

          Onions are heavy feeders of fertilizer particularly nitrogen. They do well if you put phosphorus in the soil prior to planting. I like to feed onions with nitrogen lightly, monthly, during their active growing time. It is not so important when the temperatures are cold and they are not growing fast.

Wait for the tops of onions to fall over before you harvest
unless you want to eat them fresh and not for storage

          Wait for onion tops to fall over before you harvest them. I do not recommend that you step on the tops to break the necks. They will do this all on their own and you do run the chance of developing rots if you store them for any period of time.

          So at this time of year begin to watch for onion tops that fall over. Once they fall over you can harvest the bulbs and trim the tops. You can also leave them in the soil for a week or two and harvest them fresh if you want to. Once the tops have died completely, I would get them out of the ground.