How to Braid and Store Onions

This year's garden production has been absolutely outstanding and our crop of storage onions was no exception. Here's a quick tutorial on how to store your harvest to use for months to come.

We had onions in both a double box and a shorter box. This was taken in mid June,
 about a month prior to harvest. 

Before you go to the trouble of braiding your onions for long(er) term storage, make sure your onions are a variety that will store well. Some onions keep for up to a year, but others (think Vidalia and many other sweet onions) only last a few weeks. We grew Patterson yellow storage onions this year and with care, they should keep into next spring. You can start onions from seed, from sets, or with plants. Onions started from sets do not store as well as those grown from seed or plants, so keep that in mind as well.

You will know your onions are ready to be harvested when the tops start to flop over and go brown. As long as the weather is dry, we let them stay in the the garden for a few days beyond that and then bring them into our garage to dry out some more. 

A batch of onions newly harvested from our garden.

If you are not going to braid your onions, you might want to allow them to dry for up to three weeks. That lets the foliage dry out completely, preventing mold and letting you cut the leaves from the bulb with ease. Since we were braiding ours, we let them set for about 3 days or so, just enough to begin the drying process but not so long that the leaves would be too brittle to braid. 

The Process

Here's how to do it. It might take you a few tries to create a neat braid, but it really isn't too hard. Even sloppy braids will store well.  

Crisscross three onions together just like you were braiding hair. 

Tie the onions tightly together with a piece of twine. This string will become
 part of the braid, so make sure you cut it nice and long. 

Put the long end of the twine in with the center onion's leaves. 

Begin to braid, making sure to braid the twine along with the onion leaves.

Put another onion in the center, adding its leaves to the existing strand. 

Braid the onion in to secure it. 

Add two more onions, one on the left and one on the right. Make sure you line
up their leaves with the existing strands. You will always have three strands of leaves and
you just keep adding more onions and their leaves into the braid. Note the twine is still part of the braid.  

Keep on braiding. 

Keep adding onions and braiding until you have run out of onions. If you have lots of
onions, stop while your braid is still a manageable size/weight. Once you have added
your last onion, keep braiding the remaining leaves.

Double the leaf "handle" over.

Tie it securely using the end of the twine. 

Viola! Your braid is now ready to be hung up. When you want an onion, simply cut one from
the braid. Our first braid is on the left. You can see that it took us a
 little practice to make a nice, tight braid.  

The ideal storage conditions for onions are 32-40 degrees F and 65-70% humidity. I don't have any place like that available to me at the moment, so we simply hung them up to a rafter in our basement storage room. A root cellar would be ideal. If you keep the onions in a cool dark place, they will last up to a year.


Reference: 

Harvesting and Storing Onions  


Do you grow your own onions? How do you store your onions? 

In Case You Missed It...

I have a sidebar on the right side of my blog page where I keep a running tally of our harvest totals. I know many of you access this blog through a feed reader and you might have missed it, so here ya go! 


Our 2013 egg count as of August 10:

1863 chicken eggs & 1076 duck eggs

Needless to say, we have lots of extra eggs and have been selling them to help recoup our costs.  Keeping poultry is not by any means a money maker for us. We estimate that it costs us about $3.25 for each dozen eggs produced and we sell our eggs for less than that. Still, it is something.    

We've sold a few ducklings and duck hatching eggs, too. 

Garden Harvest and Preservation Totals 

Current as of August 7:

- 81 Radishes

- 192.9 oz Swiss Chard

- 40.6 oz Mesclun Salad Mix

- 31 heads of Lettuce

- 149 heads and (mostly) side shoots of Broccoli

- 2.3 oz Spinach

- 992 Strawberries.

      - I canned 18 half-pints of jam and we ate the rest.

- 61.6 oz Pod Peas. I froze most of these.

-4 bunches of Thyme

- 102.6 oz Kale

- 16 heads of Garlic

- 109.7 oz Shelling Peas

- 22.6 oz. Blueberries

- 11 Cherries

- 77.7 oz Raspberries

A bowl of blueberries and raspberries

- Nearly 27 POUNDS Blackberries, which has been processed into:

      -10.5 pints of Raspberry/Blackberry Jam

     - 11.5 pints of Blackberries, frozen

     - 6 qt. Blackberry Fruit Leather

- 68 Cucumbers:

     - 7 pints Bread and Butter Pickles

     - 2 qt. + 1 pint Sweet Icicle Pickles

     - 6 qt. Dill Pickles

     - 2 gallons Deli-Style Dill Pickles, currently fermenting

Flavoring Agents for Deli-Style Dills

- 2 pints of dried oregano leaves

- 213.2 oz Green Beans. I froze these, too.

- 7 heads of Cabbage

- 100 Carrots

-160 Beets

     -We ate some and I pickled and canned 3 pints.

- 4 Zucchini

- 2 Watermelons

- 19+ Pounds of potatoes

- 171 onions, dried and braided for storage (Expect a post on this soon.)

- 15 peppers of various kinds

- 17 tomatoes

- 2 ears of corn

- 1 cantaloupe

Harvest Basket

We still have room for improvement, but have been much encouraged by the bountiful harvest we've had this year. How is your garden growing? 

Review: The Prepper's Cookbook

I was browsing through Amazon.com the other day and came across a new book that intrigued me -The Prepper's Cookbook: Essential Prepping Foods and Recipes to Deliciously Survive Any Disaster. 

Weirdly, I was contacted by the book's publisher the very next day and was offered a copy of the book to review. (Please note my review policy and disclaimer at the end of this post.)

The Prepper's Cookbookby Rockridge Press is available as either a print or an e-book. To me, a kindle is what you do to start a fire, so needless to say, I got the print edition.

This book is not exactly what I expected. I thought from the title that the book would mainly be recipes that utilize food storage; there is some of that, but not as much as you would think. The book is divided into four sections: Preparing Your Supplies and Food Stores, Water-Bath and Pressure Canning , Drying and Storing Your Food, and Quick and Easy Prepper Recipes.

The information included in the first section is very basic. You will not get a lot of guidance on what food you should be storing. The author seems focused on short-term emergencies and recommends that you keep 3 days to a week's worth of food for each family member. I did like the chapter that discussed various powerless cooking options.  The contents of the canning and dehydrating sections will be found (and in greater depth, at that) in any canning/preserving cookbook. It quickly covers canning jam, pickles, fruit, vegetables and meat, as well as drying fruit, vegetables, and jerky.

The Quick and Easy Prepper Recipes section reminds me of a Girl Scout camping cookbook. The recipes are mainly prepared in a Dutch Oven and rely on home-canned produce and meat. These recipes would work well in a short-term emergency or camping trip. The recipe for Apple Fritters perplexed me because it contained absolutely no apples; I know lots of us store dried apples, so that would be an easy ingredient to incorporate. Other than a bit of dried milk and eggs, you will not find recipes that use much of the food that you are storing if you follow the LDS recommendations (wheat, dried beans, etc.).

If you are just starting and need guidance on the first steps toward becoming prepared, I would recommend the book Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens instead. If you'd like recipes that use traditional food storage, Cookin' with Home Storage or the Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook will better serve your purpose. The Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving has a wider array of information on home canning and freezing and I haven't found a book on dehydration to beat Preserve It Naturally , the manual that came with my Excalibur Dehydrator.

In summary,The Preppers Cookbook is not horrible, but probably not worth purchasing unless you have to have every prepper-themed book on the market. Borrow this one from the library.

Disclaimer: I was contacted by Callisto Media and sent a free copy of The Prepper's Cookbook. As always, I was not compensated for this review and all opinions are my own.

The Easiest Fruit to Grow for Survival, Plus, How to Make Blackberry Fruit Leather

If I could only grow one kind of fruit or berry, I think it would have to be blackberries. They grow wild in many parts of the country, but they are also incredibly easy to grow in your yard or garden. They pretty much take care of themselves. All we do is fertilize them with organic fertilizer in the spring, spread mulch around the canes, and keep the area weeded. That's it. Complex spraying regimes are unnecessary and our bushes have always been untroubled by insects or diseases.

'Triple Crown' blackberries require a trellis while 'Chester' blackberries do not.

You can find varieties of blackberries that will grow well in USDA hardiness zones 5-10. We live in zone 5, so we bought two varieties of thornless blackberries that can withstand cold temperatures. The 'Triple Crown' variety is my favorite. It does require a trellis to support its long, floppy canes. Those long canes, however, yield huge numbers of berries, up to 30 lb PER VINE.

A 'Triple Crown' berry cluster.

After all the berries have been harvested for the year, you have to cut the spent canes back and tie up the new canes that grow to take their place. Simple. 

Blackberries! And a few raspberries. Raspberries are pretty easy to grow, too, but
they are not nearly as bountiful producers for us. 

Blackberries are also exceptionally nutritious. Each cup of berries contains 50% of your RDA of Vitamin C, plus large amounts of fiber and cancer-fighting antioxidants.

About the only drawback to blackberries is that the fruit is highly perishable. If you pick them when they are dead ripe on the vine, you really only have a few days to eat them before they are past their prime. They are easily preserved, however. 

I can blackberry jam and freeze many pints of whole berries to use in cobblers later in the year. You can also dehydrate the berries whole or try this recipe for blackberry leather (aka fruit roll-up). The leather will last up to a year when stored properly. 

How to make Blackberry Fruit Leather: 

Based on a recipe in The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves. 

There are only two ingredients in this recipe: 

5 lb blackberries

1 lb applesauce. I used sweetened applesauce that I canned myself. 

The first, and most difficult, task is to seed the blackberries. You can stew them and then press the softened berries through a fine-mesh sieve, but that will drive you bonkers and possibly stain your entire kitchen with blackberry juice. It is much easier to use a food mill of some kind. 

I recommend this Roma Food Strainer. It definitely will get the job done.  

My Roma Food Mill, ready for action. 

I use the berry screen attachment (sold separately) and it keeps every single one of those tiny blackberry seeds out of the juice. I usually pass the pulp through the mill three times just to make sure I get out all of the juice and then I feed the remaining pulp to my chickens.

The blackberry juice and applesauce mixture

Stir in the applesauce and you are ready to make fruit leather. (The applesauce is used to improve the texture of the final product. You can't really taste it.)

I have an Excalibur Dehydrator that I really like and recommend. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can try making this in your oven, though I haven't tried it and can't vouch for it. You would want to keep your oven at the lowest possible setting, use parchment paper instead of plastic wrap, and check on it often. 

Assuming you have a dehydrator (and if you are a gardener or prepper, you really should!), this is how to proceed:

Line the dehydrator trays with plastic wrap, taking special care to make sure the wrap is secure. I left an 1" margin on both sides of the tray so the air could circulate more easily.

Fruit on the prepared tray

Spread the fruit mixture on the plastic wrap. You are looking for a depth of approximately 1/4", but you want the edges to be thicker than the center. That will help the whole sheet of fruit dry evenly.

Loading up

This recipe filled 6 of the 9 trays of my Excalibur. I set the temperature at 135 degrees. After about 5 hours, I checked on the leather and it was making excellent progress. I turned it down 20 degrees, just to make sure that the leather remained pliable and did not get brittle. After a total of 15 hours, the leather was at the perfect consistency. It was tacky to the touch, but not wet. The time it takes your batch of leather to dry will be dependent on many factors - your dehydrator, the humidity, how thick you spread the fruit, etc.

Done!

Then all you have to do it remove the plastic wrap from the tray and roll it up like a scroll.

I cut each roll in half so they would could fit in quart canning jars for storage.

Next, I used my Food Saver's accessory attachment to vacuum seal a clean, used canning lid to the jar.

Et viola! A healthy, homemade snack that will last until next year's blackberry harvest. If I can keep it hidden from my kids, that is...

Summer on the Homestead

If you've been wondering where I've been, here's a few pictures to show why I've been so busy. It has been the best garden year yet.

Looking northeast

Everything is growing and yielding so well. Even the crops that are traditionally our Achilles heel (carrots, I'm looking at you...) are very bountiful this summer.

Looking southwest

A few of the ladies checking out the companion planting arrangement. The cucumbers have been
trellised up since I took that photo, which unfortunately cuts out their view. Too bad, because
 I think they were taking notes on improvements for next year. ;) 

One thing we did differently this year was to focus on companion planting. You can see that we have healthy borage and marigold plants in with our cucumbers in the above photo.

Cabbages, dill, and cantaloupe

We also have dill and nasturtiums mixed into some of the plantings.

'Black Velvet' Nasturtium

I think the beneficial plants do make a difference. It seems like our bug problems are a bit muted this year. Anyway, our garden is more colorful and that is a pleasure.

The sky after a storm. Freaky. 

The 'Gypsy' tomato plant we started from seed. We are just starting to get a few tomatoes turning red.

'Tribute' everbearing strawberries

'Chioggia' and 'Detroit Red' Beets

Our beets grew exceptionally well.

Pickled Beets

I was able to can several pints of pickled beets. Yum!

Late June Orchard 

We now have a mini forest of tiny trees and bushes in our orchard. Unfortunately, the 'Gold Rush' apple that was so hard hit by cedar-apple rust last year didn't make it. The 'Surecrop' cherry we planted just this spring has also died from mysterious causes. We'll replace those trees in upcoming years and I have made it a mission of mine to select rust-resistant trees from now on.

One of our new poultry pens

My poultry addiction continues full-tilt. I am up to five different pens for chickens and/or ducks and have become a serious breeder of two different varieties. Hubby Dear just loves building all the infrastructure for me. ;)  The whole family loves the process of incubating and hatching ducklings and chicks. 

Have you seen this video yet? Yeah. That video describes what happened to me to a T.

Raspberries and blueberries 

A harvest basket: cucumbers, carrots, 'Costata Romanesco' zucchini, and cabbage

A typical meal: frittata, broccoli, salad, and peas, all from our homestead

I have updated the harvest and egg totals on the sidebar. I hope your summer is as bountiful as ours has been.