174 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
Mr. Smith: Every one who has tried to keep onions knows 
that it is a simple matter to keep a few bushels in a very satisfactory 
manner, but where you have ten thousand bushels it is an entirely 
different matter. We have grown onions by the transplanting 
methods, and we did not get big crops, and you want to get a hustle 
on you and sell them before the main crop from the seed gets on the 
market. There is one grower I know who has grown the Prize 
Taker for several years. They were fine, large onions, and he could . 
sell them. This year he could not sell them, and he had his stock 
on hand, and they did not keep. The usual‘average of a crop of 
onions raised by the best growers is from six to seven hundred 
bushels per acre for the entire field. On some pieces I have no 
doubt raised a score of times as much as one hundred bushels on a 
tenth of an acre, although I never reported that amount. 
Mr. Grimes: I have a market gardener out on my farm who 
is quite an expert in onion growing, and as he is not here I will state 
some observations in regard to his work. Last spring he sowed 
one pound of onion seed, and from that one pound he raised seven 
hundred bushels. In the first place, when his onions are ripe he 
pulls them and leaves them on the ground until the tops are dry and 
well cured, and then he gathers them up and takes off the tops. He 
has crates that hold a bushel each, and he puts these onions in those 
crates, and stacks them up out doors, and he leaves them out as 
long as the weather will permit. The crates are open so as to per- 
mit the air to have free circulation, and they are in that way 
thoroughly dried out. Then he puts them in an onion house in the 
crates, and they remain there until spring. He does not propose 
to sell his onions in the fall, but holds them for the spring market. 
Last year the best he could have done with his onions in the fall was 
forty cents a bushel, whereas, by holding them until spring he real- 
ized seventy cents a bushel when there was a demand for them. 
Prof, Waldron: What variety did he raise? 
Mr. Grimes: He has raised a number of varieties, but he raises 
the Red Globe principally. 
Mr. Yahnke: I have had an experience of forty years in grow- 
ing onions. I havea patch where I have grown onions for twenty- 
five years in succession and had but one failure, but I have never 
had such success as this gentleman speaks of, and I have never 
transplanted. I raised as high as six and seven hundred bushels to 
the acre. I never will raise those large onions, because I cannot sell 
them to my customers. For home market I prefer to sell a fine 
grained onion and not too large. As far as the last point is con- 
cerned, we must raise onions that possess keeping qualities, and I 
raise only those varieties that have that quality. Then there is 
judicious harvesting. The keeping of onions depends a great deal 
upon the harvesting. As soon as the onions are ripe they should 
be pulled and thrown on the ground where it is dry, and they should 
not be allowed to remain longer on the ground in the sun than until 
they are dry, otherwise they will become strong. As soon as they 
are dry pull off the tops. If you do not want to cut them off, you 
can leave an end two inches long. Then store them in some place 
where they will have a good chance to dry out. In Russia where 
