Help! What’s Wrong With my Onions?

I posted a picture of my onion harvest on my instagram page the other day and someone made this comment:

This is the 1st year I’ve put out a garden, my onions have fallen over and the base has gone mushy. I harvested them, only three were bad, but I was wondering why it happened?? Any ideas?

Honestly, there are a lot of possibilities that would make them mushy.  First up, a bacterial disease.

Onions become susceptible to bacterial infections once the bulbs start to form, or if they get wounds in the leaves.  There are a couple of bacterial diseasaes that are possible, and they are pretty hard to tell apart.  Unfortunately, the bacteria can reside in the soil, in the irrigation water, etc., so preventing it can be tricky.  Your best bet is to use flood irrigation once the bulbs form.  It keeps bacteria from the dirt from splashing up onto the leaves, as it might when using sprinklers.  Onions can also be susceptible after harvest, so curing them correctly is super important.

Next, you may have had onion maggots.  They like to get inside the stems and destroy your onions from the inside out.  I don’t think this sounds like the case with  you, or you would have seen evidence when you dug them up, but still, they would cause a mushy-ness.

Finally, it’s possible for your onions to get fungal infections and become mushy.  Usually, you will see evidence of a fungus, like white, gray or black powdery looking stuff on the onion.  Fungal problems typically come from cool weather or over-watering.  Again, keeping the water off of the leaves by using flood irrigation really helps.

If I were a betting lady, I’d say  you had a bacteria {just because you didn’t really mention evidence of anything else}.  I’d plant your onions in a new spot next year {crop rotation}, and try the flood irrigation.

Hope that helps!

~Mavis