The best answer to your query is "I don't know" or "maybe".

Sometimes onions straighten back up and resume growth and are relatively unaffected by storm damage. However, sometimes they don't.
You should know within a few days if they are going to straighten up and recover. They may not straighten up completely, but they'll perk up and, more importantly, keep growing and keep putting out new leaves.

On the other hand, if you see foliage yellowing or browning or shriveling, then the 'bend' in the stalk is too close to being a break for recovery and you might as well harvest the onions and use or preserve them right away.

A larger issue is that often secondary problems often develop and with damaged onions it can take the form of soft rot.

Different varieties respond differentl to damage. In my garden, Texas 1015Y had the poorest tolerance of storm damage this year and I just should have yanked them after the hail beat them down to the ground because they developed soft rot. All the other varieties shrugged off the damage and soldiered on.

Diane - I experienced the same thing as Dawn. I had a short-day sampler as well as an intermediate sampler. The 1015Y's that were hit by several late frost then the hail all seemed to rot in the ground. Some of the Red Candy didn't do well either, but they didn't rot. Most of the rest stood up after a couple of warm days and were fine.

I only planted 5 1/2 bundles from Dixondale. So far, I have 75 lbs of red, yellow and white onions that I've weighed & stored. We guesstimate that we've probably eaten and given away at least another 15 to 20 lbs.

I'll bet that yours are gonna "straighten up and fly right"!!

Paula

Thanks, gals! That makes me feel quite a bit better. The short days are nice & big already so I'd not been terribly worried about them but the intermediates & long days still have a ways to go. The forecast finally looks decent for the next few days with warm temps & sun. Hopefully, that'll make 'em want to snap out of it & quit sulking.

I'm so excited to have such a (potentially) great onion year!

Diane

Diane,
I would imagine your onions should be fine. The wind usually knocks the tops of mine over. I usually have large bulbs. The hail beat my tops down to a few inches. Two varieties just quit and died. The rest have regrown. The tops are just getting tall enough the wind is breaking them over. I don't worry. Unless the stem dies I've always had large bulbs. I grow onions from all 3 classes also. The short day varieties suffered the worst from the hail. It is too early to tell much about the rest but feel good about them. Have dug about half of my garlic. The hail really hurt the size of the bulbs. Hope your onions do well. Jay

My short day varieties suffered from hail the most too. I wonder why. Are short day varieties just big wimps?

I didn't have the hail so I don't have that excuse for mine. Mine fell over when the ground became too wet and soft to hold them upright. Some never did straighten up but they continued to grow, but not a lot. So most of mine were only around golf ball size or a little bigger. Toward the end most of the Candy started to go to seed instead of falling over. I have close to 50 bags (1/2 cup) in the freezer, and enough cured for a couple of months so it's not a total loss, but certainly not what it should have been. Mine were all intermediate type.

Most of the intermediate and long days are starting to stand back up but I think most of the short days are toast. No prob since it was about their time anyway. I'll be out there feeling their necks over the next few days and pulling, chopping,and freezing. Thanks to the power outage from the storm, our small chest freezer is now cleaned out & defrosted, ready for bags of onions.

I think I like having this mix of three types so the harvest is spread out. (That's assuming the intermediates and longs continue to do well.) I wish I'd done that on the sweet corn! But since it was planted so late, I wasn't terribly confident there'd be time for different timings on those. I have 1300' of sweet corn that's all going to be ready for picking at the same time. I'm such a genius. *snort*

Diane

Carol,

You're ahead of me on getting onions chopped and into the freezer. So far, I've only put about 15 lbs. into the freezer. I'm going to do a lot more tomorrow if nothing happens to ruin my "schedule".

Considering how much rain you had, it's amazing the onions didn't just rot.

Diane, Uh oh. Does that mean the small freezer defrosted and you lost food that was stored in it? I hope not.

The corn situation is tragic. Just tragic. By the time you've harvested all that corn, eaten your fill fresh, and processed it, I think you'll be sick of corn. On the other hand, you have lots of cheap child labor to assist you. Or, if you get really desperate to finish up harvesting the corn, just let me know and I'll have a little talk with our raccoons. I'm sure they'd be happy to come help you out with the corn. They sure do harvest ours every chance they get!

I always try to time my plantings so I have early, mid and late-season corn with the harvests spread out over about 6 to 8 weeks. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. This year it has worked, so far, knock on wood. The early is done and the mid is almost done and the late is just beginning to tassel. One year they all finished up about the same time and it seems like all I did for days was harvest and process corn. Still, it's nice to have all that corn.

Dawn

No, no food was lost. I consolidated all of the freezers' contents into the biggest one to better prolong the, um, frozenness. (Is that even a word? I've just come in from mowing and I think I baked my brain.)

I saw raccoon tracks through the garden, right between a row of potatoes and a row of summer squash -- the day after I planted the corn. Then the day after that, I went to town and, on the way home, I must have seen a dozen raccoons along or crossing the road. They're out to get me! Or maybe just the corn but still... I planted winter squash all around the perimeter of the corn patch in an effort to keep out the raccoons. I've heard the prickly squash leaves irritate their paws and deter them from getting to the corn. I've no idea if it's true but I figured it couldn't hurt.

A thought just crossed my mind: I wonder if raccoons get poison ivy? I found a huge patch between the garden edge and the treeline as I was mowing. I was going to get out there and pull them all (hubby is horribly sensitive to it but I'm not) but if it punishes the raccoons, I'll leave it. Now if I could just figure out how to shave the raccoons so the PI oils contact their skin directly... ;-)

Diane

I'm glad the food was fine. I consolidate down to one freezer too over time as we eat the current year's produce. What I'm doing lately, though, is filling bags with ice from our icemaker, filling up empty spots in the freezer with ice. That gives me a lot of ice on hand to use, for example, when doing the rapid cool-down stage of blanching. Or, if we have a big fire that's closer to our house than to the fire station, I've got ice here, and cases of water and Gatorade out in the extra refrigerator in the garage so I can go straight to the fire instead of going to the fire station to get drinks and then coming back here. This just seems like the kind of summer when it would be good to have extra ice stockpiled.

About the raccoons, you aren't going to like this.....but raccoons eat the berries from poison ivy. So, if you leave that poison ivy there, not only will it not deter them, it instead likely will attract them. Then they'll eat the berries, and poop the seeds out on your property and you'll have even more poison ivy. See there, I told you that you weren't going to like it.

We use two main methods of raccoon control. Our dog, Sam, will run and grab one by the neck and do some sort of little head-shake thing, snapping the raccoon's neck. Then, he drops it and goes on with his yard patrol. Any time you take Sam out into the yard, he patrols the shrub beds, flower beds and veggie garden perimeter, looking for unwelcome varmints. If you haven't made him go inside by that point, he patrols the ponds, the edge of the woods and the fenceline. Apparently, in a previous life, he was a security guard. The other way? Well, it involves an unfortunate collision with flying lead. We used to trap and relocate them, but after years of dealing with them getting chicks and chickens, including full-sized roosters, and always trying to get our corn, we gave up on peaceful coexistence and now treat all raccoons with a "Go ahead, make my day" attitude.

Some years the raccoons get the the corn and some years they don't and it doesn't seem they get the corn any less when the squash and pumpkin vines are big and surround the corn, and it doesn't seem they get the corn more when there are no squash plants. I can't see any rhyme or reason to it.

So far this year, the raccoons have gotten about 20 ears of corn, 1 rooster and 1 chicken (somebody's DH went outside to close up the chicken coop and, inexplicably, came back inside without closing the coop door) and some strawberries and tomatoes, but we've sent 8 raccoons to Raccoon Heaven where, as far as we know, perhaps the streets are paved with....corn, or maybe poison ivy berries.

I'd opt for peaceful coexistence if they'd stop killing our poultry. Two of our friends have had issues with raccoons killing their cats and kittens, but so far that hasn't happened here as far as we know. I mean, we've had cats go off roaming around and just never come back, but usually that's during the daytime and the raccoons tend to be noctural. Around here, you can walk outside around 9-10 p.m. any day of the week and it is likely a raccoon will be there in the yard. I used to think they were so cute, but their cuteness faded with every chick, chicken and rooster they killed.

I usually try to keep extra ice in the freezers, too, since we go through so much of it in summer but I've been trying to get the freezer contents down as much as I can in anticipation of filling it with what I hope to be decent harvests of at least a few crops. I think we'll probably be buying yet another deep freeze in the next few months.

Okay, I'm not thrilled to hear the bad raccoon news. I had figured as much but, being a gardener, hope springs eternal and all that crap. *sigh* At least we should have lots of squash this year! We'd love to have some target practice with the critters around here but the land is so flat and the neighbors so (relatively) close, we don't dare start popping off the .22 in the dark hours. We actually like our neighbors here so I'd hate to do a SS&S on them. ;-)

Diane