So it turns out that 19th August was wet, and therefore the big day was delayed until 21st August. Show date is 17th September so this gives me less that four weeks to get the onions ready for showing… in hindsight I think I should have lifted them sooner, but they seemed to be growing on so well it would have been a shame. Lifting from the well cultivated soil and top layer of well rotted manure as mulch was easy and required only a hand fork. I trimmed off most of the leaves, leaving about 10cm to handle the bulbs with. I also roughly trimmed off the roots from the base plate at this stage. I wrapped the onions in tea towels and brought them indoors to tidy up.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a complete newbie to this and I found this video really helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CED-qjnJMU

Once indoors I washed, skinned and trimmed the bulbs and then had a good look at them and weighed them to see if I could make up any decent groups for the show.

A few of the onions I lifted had started to split (where the central bulb divides into two), giving rise to odd shapes. My research leads me to believe that this is caused by irregular watering. Mea culpa – I drowned them when it was dry and did not water them when it had rained – a learning point for next time.

My heaviest onion weighed in at 720 grams. It may be small but it is perfectly formed. This is a very poor effort and I’m wondering whether it’s even worth entering it into the class. I don’t want the poor thing to be embarrassed!

I have four onions around 600 grams. Typical luck is that two are almost identical in shape, whereas the other two are distinctly different – one is flatter and squatter, the other is more bulbous on one side that the other.

There are some smaller groups at around 400 grams (both red and white). I’ll see how they ripen up and then make a decision on which three would look best.

I’ve allocated some space in racking in the garage. I’ve put down a thick towel and then a muslin cover to try and prevent them from getting damaged during storage. I’ve also liberally dusted them with talcum powder which apparently helps the skins to dry out. Let’s see how they go.