STORING ONIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 April 1938, Page 5

STORING ONIONS

PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN. Before storing onions for keeping for sale in the winter, examine them carefully to see that they are thoroughly dry, paying particular attention to the neck of the onion, states a writer in the New Zealand Journal of Agriculture. At the same time discard all onions with thick necks, for

these will not keep, and should therefore be sold oil the field.

If only one or two bags of onions have been harvested, the tops need not be clipped, and the onions can be strung up in a shed. Where large quantities of onions have to be dealt with, they can be stored in sheds, cither loose in heaps or in bags, cixites, or boxes, or on racks, or they may be pitted in the open. It is difficult to state what method of storage is best.

Providing they are properly dry at harvesting-time and placed in a cool, dry place, onions will keep well whatever the method of storage. For pitting in the open, a number of boxes should be placed on the ground, the bags stacked upright on top of these two deep with air-tunnels for ventilation, and the whole covered with straw or other material to shed the rain. The straw should be weighted down to keep it in place. Onions

keep quite well pitted in this way. If the roof of a shed holding onions is. made of iron, the interior of the shed, particularly near the roof, will be very hot during the day and cold at night. Much moisture also will condense on the roof in the evenings. These conditions are unsuitable for the keeping of onions, but lhe trouble may be minimised by placing insulat-ing-material under the roofing-iron. Sheds for storing onions really should

have wooden or other material than iron for roof-construction. Onions stored in bags, crates, or in racks can be examined easily for evidence of root growth or sprouting, but onions stored loose are more difficult to examine. However, usually it is not necessary to examine them, as the onions at the top of the heap generally commence growth before those beneath.

Seven weasels chased and tried to attack a sixty-three-year-old man in North Wales. He escaped them by jumping over a wall into an adjoining field. M. Paul Kern, a disabled Hungarian ex-serviceman, who had not had a moment’s sleep since 1915, has now tried typnotic treatment, and was able to sleep while under the hypnotist s influence.