It's been a fairly late/cold season, and most everything is a month or more behind the typical schedule, onions included. I planted a row and a half of Alsia Craig variety which had been behind their usual progress here, but had sized up nicely in the last month. they are probably 80-90% of their usual size right now. So here's the question. A couple of weeks ago we had a cold snap. It was predicted to be snow and 28F for a low, so I did not do anything with the onions. Instead it cleared and got down to 25-26F. A very hard freeze.

The onions suffered a bit, leaves drooped down and there was a bit of softness to the outside layer of the bulbs on some of them. Since then, it has warmed up (nitetime lows in the 40'sF, days in the 60-70F range). It looks like we ight get another week or two of this weather.

My question is what to do with these onions. The leaves have recovered some. Should I leave the onions to grow some more? Will the damaged outer bulb layer recover or dry off? Should I make use of this warm spell to dry off the onions, pushing over the leaves and puling them?

At this point, I am not that concerned with trying to get the bulbs any bigger. I would just like to do whatever would promote the best storage abilities for these onions.

Thoughts?

After a few weeks of curing I would check for soft spots and use those ones first.

Good luck,
-Mark