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As I wrote before, I used the method from John Seymour's "The New Self-Sufficient Gardener." Here are photos to go along with the steps.
Start with dried onions. The tops need to be brown and mostly crispy.
Next you need about three feet of string I recommend something strong like twine. I used a light string for my first set and it broke the next day. Twine worked better. Tie a knot with the two ends and hang from a hook. I recommend doing it outside, as you end up with many onion skins and leaves all over by the time you are finished.
At the bottom of the string at the loop, take an onion with a long tail and tie it to the string. This is the only onion you'll have to tie.
Take the next onion and set it on top, putting the greens between the two strings.
Wrap the onion leaves around the string on the right, bringing it to the front. Then put them behind the string on the left.
Do this a few times to secure the onion.
Add another onion, and weave the leaves in and out between the strings. I found that if I continued to weave the leaves from all the previous onions in, that the weave got to too big and the onions were to spread apart.
Instead, it was better to weave the tops in some and then let them stick out at the sides, leaving room for the tops of the next onions. Make sure to add onions starting from all sides of the string.
Stop when you are getting close to the top of your string or you run out of onions.
Tie a knot with the twine above the last onion. Trim off the ends of the onion greens that are sticking out, then hang in a cool place to store.
This is one of my Jarrahdale pumpkins that has been in a cool upstairs room since I harvested it last fall. The photo above is what it looked like when we harvested it. We enjoyed one of these large pumpkins then, but two other went into this cool room. A third smaller one sat on our coffee table as decoration until December. The two that were in the cool room have begun to turn peach in color, while the one that was downstairs in warmer temperatures is still green. Here is the peach color that two of them have turned now.
This week I cut into one of the peach colored Jarrahdales. Inside the flesh was the same beautiful orange with the small cavity and large seeds. I roasted half of it face down and made puree. The puree became pumpkin gnocchi. I'll also use some to make pumpkin bread or muffins. The other half, I cubed and roasted and froze for using later in soups or risottos.
The Jarradale does provide a lot of pumpkin at once. It is a good substitute for butternut squash, some even say it is a winter squash. It will be a few months before we cut into another. I've read they can be a long keeper and I wonder how long they will last. We'll be growing these again next year.
