Cure onions and garlic before you store them
As recorded: Onions and garlic lifted for storage are cured first, dried down in a warm, airy, shaded place for about two to four weeks until the neck is tight and dry and the outer scales are papery. Bulbs stored uncured, or poorly cured, rot in storage.
Promising A person has checked it against its sources. If you skip this, it still grows, just less well. The planner suggests it.
How it works
At harvest the bulb's neck and outer scales are still moist living tissue and the neck is an open channel into the bulb, so curing in warm moving air dries the neck shut and the outer scales to a papery protective skin, removing the wet tissue that storage rots colonise and sealing the neck they enter by; an uncured bulb goes into storage with a moist open neck and soft scales, and decays.
What to do about it
After lifting, spread the bulbs in a single layer or hang them in bundles in a warm, shaded, well-ventilated place out of direct sun and rain, and leave them until the neck is dry and tight and the outer skin is papery. That takes roughly two to four weeks for onions (a warm 75-90 °F speeds it) and two to three weeks for garlic. Only then trim, and keep the cured bulbs in mesh bags or shallow boxes in a cool, dry, well-ventilated spot. Handle gently throughout, as bruising also seeds storage rot.
How much it matters: No decay rate or shelf-life figure is invented. The sources give a curing window (about two to four weeks for onion, two to three for garlic) and warn that poor curing causes storage decay, without a quantified loss; the risk is highest for a bruised or uncured bulb stored straight off the ground and lowest for a well-cured one, and because curing is entirely the gardener's to do, the rule advises.
The evidence
Evidence: checked against 2 sources in the research-based literature.
The 2 sources
Keep the onions in a warm (75F - 90F), well-ventilated area for two to four weeks, until outer bulb scales are dry and the neck is tight
Allow bulbs to dry until the neck is dry and the outer skin is papery, approximately two to three weeks
Plants it applies to
Read next
- Growing onions by day length and garlic from a fall plantingOnions (Allium cepa) and garlic (Allium sativum) are close cousins on opposite calendars. Onions go in early in spring, garlic in autumn.
- When to pick your harvest, and how to make it keepThe picking signs for each crop, which ones must cure before they'll keep, the three kinds of pantry, and what should never see the refrigerator.
How this rule has changed
Every change is dated, newest first. The full record, with each reason, is in the data download.
- Wording made clearer
- Wording made clearer
- Added to the rules
Cite this page
Milpa Gardens. "Cure onions and garlic before you store them." Evidence grade: Promising. https://milpa.garden/rules/onions-garlic-lifted-storage-cured-first-dried/
A garden planner built on graded evidence. Every claim states its evidence grade and links its sources on the page. Cite it with the grade, and add the date you read it.
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How we grade evidence
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- The rule names its mechanism and is settled, by sources a person has read and checked or by plain arithmetic and geometry.
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