So Maybe Onions Don't Like Hot Weather?

I've never had much trouble growing onions.  Even the red ones, that some believe are difficult to grow and keep, usually do well for me.

 

Not so much this year.

 

I devote three of my 4' x 8' raised beds to my onion crop.  One bed of yellow, one bed of red, and a third to half yellow, half red.  That keeps us in onions all the way into spring time when they start to sprout so vigorously that a few end up in the compost bin.

 

For some mysterious reason, this year the half and half bed died down and the stalks turned completely brown much sooner than the other two beds.  So I dug them, brought them in to cure on racks where they've been for about two and a half weeks.   I decided today was time to clean them up for the next several months of storage. 

 

Obviously, I knew when they came out of the ground that they weren't of a size that was going to win any blue ribbons at the county fair.  (Never mind the fact that we haven't had a county fair in a number of years now.)

 

They're all small to medium in size, not a big one in the bunch.  What went wrong this year?  Well, even though I watered with sprinkler or hand-held hose close to daily because of our drought conditions, maybe they simply required the natural rain water that was almost totally lacking.  Or was it too hot for them day after brilliantly sunny, scorching day?

 

I'll probably never know.

 

Maybe the two beds that still have green, green stalks on them will turn out to have all the large onions hiding just beneath the soil.  Or not.  And why was this one bed ready well ahead of the other two when all three beds were in much the same location?  Questions, questions.

 

Whatever the final harvest turns out to be, I'll be grateful to have all the onions our garden gives us this year.  Small little orbs or otherwise!