Onions: The Backbone of the Kitchen

Onions: The Backbone of my Kitchen

You don’t realize how much you rely on onions until you’re out of them. Around here, they’re the start of just about every meal—quietly anchoring soups, sauces, and sautés without making a fuss. And funny enough, that’s pretty much how they behave in the field too: steady, humble, and hard-working from start to finish.

In the Owens Valley, I’ve had two main ways of growing onions successfully. The first is by seed—starting them indoors in the dead of winter when the days are short and everything feels a little dormant. It takes patience, good light, and the right conditions, but it can be done.

The more reliable method? Starts. Let the professionals handle the finicky seed stage. I do! Onion starts are young plants ready to go into the ground—and they’re tough. I plant mine at the end of February, well before most other crops. Don’t worry about frosts. They might look like tiny, half-dead twigs when you first plant them, but onions are resilient. Give them a few weeks and they’ll bounce back strong.

Here’s the thing: onions are biennials. They grow their bulb the first year, then flower in the second. But if the weather gets weird—too hot, too cold, or just confused, or their watering gets messed up—they might try to flower early. If they bolt, just pull them and eat them fresh. They’re still delicious, but they won’t cure or store as well, so skip the cellar and toss them into dinner.

They’re also daylight sensitive. As the days stretch longer, onions respond by bulking up underground. When harvest time comes, they’ll give you a signal: the tops flop over like they’ve given up. I refer to it as their “necks” breaking. That’s your cue. Pull them, lay them out in the shade in a well-ventilated spot, and let them cure for a couple of weeks. Once the skins are papery and the necks are dry, they’re ready for long-term storage.

So no, onions don’t grab headlines. But they’re steady, dependable, and essential. They hold up the whole kitchen—and they’ve earned their spot in our fields and on the plate.

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PS: We’ve got onions just finished from curing now at the farm stand—swing by and stock your pantry with the real MVPs of flavor.