We have been talking about onions on this blog for months now. And if you’ve been traveling this journey with me I’m positive you’ve learned something and grown with me. We started with basics of nursery preparation and management to the farm management: thinning and gapping. It has matured and now it’s time for harvesting.
First it’s important to note that harvesting onions is dependent on other factors and not just on maturity alone like in other crops. Market is the biggest determinant. By market I mean the right bulb size your customers prefer. Most soko traders go for small and medium sized ones since that’s the size their own customers purchase. But hotels and other large establishments prefer large sized ones. So, first as you already know by now, you have to be aware of your market long before planting onions to avoid headaches in the future.
There are two ways of preparing onions for harvesting. The first one is the natural way of cutting water and letting the onion leaves to dry. The second way is necking which we are talking about today.
Necking is the process where you physically bend the onion at the base to stop growth. This process is meant to accelerate the processing of drying and readiness for harvesting. But you have to cut the water as well and if there’s no rain, it will take one to two weeks (if there’s enough sunlight) for the onions to be ready for harvesting.
Right preparation of onions before harvesting is important to having quality crop that is desirable. Otherwise you will have onions that will continue growing after harvesting and end up rotting leading to losses.
As I finish, good to note that necking is quite a hectic process and labour intensive. You will need many hands if you are to neck a large field of onions. But this whole procedure can be avoided completely by allowing onions to mature and fold naturally.