The Allium Family

I know people who don’t like onions and garlic. They shall be judged for this crime by whatever gods they follow, yet you and I, normal people with functioning taste-buds, can grow any member of the allium family in our gardens. Or, as you’ll see from the pictures below, on our allotment plots.

I’m concentrating on onions and garlic, partly because they’re the most widely used of the allium family and also because they’re ideal for planting now, as long as you choose the right varieties.

Onions

If you’re planting in September/October for harvest next year you’ll need an onion set that can survive winter. You can grow onions from seed but it’s too late in the year for that now, so I’m using a set, which is essentially a load of baby onions that somebody else has grown from seed.

It’s worth growing onions from seeds if you can as you get a far greater variety than from sets, but if you have a bit of garden/allotment that is empty over winter then it’s good to fill it with something that’ll tolerate frost and snow. The set I’m using here is called Senshyu, which is a Japanese onion, fairly obviously from that name.

Preparation

The prepared onion bed

Onions are really easy to grow and not particularly greedy when it comes to nutrients in the soil, but everything grows better with a bit of help. The bed here has been dug-over, weeded, topped up with some general garden compost and then tilled until it has a fine airy texture. In the past we’ve had onions show a bit of rot because they’ve sat in waterlogged compacted soil, but the raised nature of this bed and the fact it’s been turned over should ensure that the drainage is good. If you’re growing at ground level – and especially if you have heavy clay soil - then you can mix some grit in with the compost to improve the drainage.

Planting

Spacing Of Onions

If you’ve prepared the soil well then it should be easy to prod the onions through the top of the soil with your finger. Onions should be placed to a depth where the top of the onion is still showing, even if just a little bit. I try to aim for about 75% below ground and 25% above but some of them are so small that it’s hard to get it just right.

It should be fairly obvious which way up onions go, the flat bottom is where the roots will shoot from so put them in that way, with the pointier end poking out of the ground.

Generally I space onions by growing each one in a row the width of an open hand from its neighbour. I space rows about the same distance but stagger the onions in it slightly so you could make triangles with the onions of different rows.

Hands of course are not a standard size, so if you have the gigantic fists of a heavyweight boxer you may need to scale it back a bit.

Here’s the complete bed, now containing a ridiculous amount of baby onions

The completed bed - over 120 onions

Care

Onions aren’t particularly greedy plants and I generally leave them alone over winter, only watering and feeding once we reach April. They also don’t require much care then, watering only if there is an extended dry period and feeding occasionally with a general fertiliser. I use a homemade liquid comfrey feed but have used organic chicken manure in the past. A feed high in potash will give larger onions, but, as with most vegetables, the bigger they are the less taste they have. So, personally, I’d go for a feed higher in nitrogen.

Sometimes onions start to form a bulb at the top of the leaves – this is an onion threatening to form a flower bud. If you see this then snip it off, assuming you don’t want to try and collect your own onion seeds. An onion that goes to flower though will not really be worth eating. It’s up to you.

Pests

The worst of the birds is the pigeon

You can maybe see from the picture above that we’ve netted our onions. This is because birds delight in pulling small onions from the ground. Try to make nets quite tight so birds don’t become tangled in them.

The allium family has relatively few pest problems, but at the allotment we suffer from two problems: leek rust and white rot.

With leek rust the leaves of the onion often show patches of yellow and look, well, rusty. As with most fungal problems, this is usually far worse in wet weather. Most attacks are mild and don’t really affect the crop but on rare occasions all the leaves of an onion will become rusty and die. And when that happens the onion will stop growing. There’s nothing you can do with rust bar removing the worst affected leaves, but as onions have very few leaves this may not be practical. To reduce the chances of it happening in the first place try not to crowd onions in and ensure that you don’t plant alliums in the same place every year.

Whereas leek rust can affect yield and onion size, white rot is a more annoying problem. You generally first notice it when the foliage of some onions dies back quicker than its neighbours. Upon removing them from the ground you find a white fluffy fungus stuck to the roots. Congratulations, you have white rot! Cut the onion open to see if the infestation has damaged the bulb. As this is a soil-borne fungus then it’s probably wise not to plant onions in the same soil again.

Harvest
 

Oop north here in Lancashire we generally harvest ours onions from May to July. We try to stagger it because there are 120 onions in the pictures above and as much as I love onions it’s too many to eat at once.

Many people say Japanese onions don’t keep as well as other varieties but we’ve not had much of a problem. When the foliage turns yellow and dies back you can dig onions up, and weather permitting, leave them on top of the soil to dry out. If it’s raining then store them inside, somewhere dry. Never store onions if they’re dirty or wet and chuck away any soft or diseased. Firm, clean and dry onions should keep for quite a while. Unless you really like onions, in which case even 120 don’t last as long as you want them to.

Garlic
 

It’s also the time of year to plant the one thing even better than onions: garlic. I plant a variety called Marco, which generally gives good results, even with an awful Lancastrian summer. Which is every Lancastrian summer.

It’s always good to check which variety will grow well around where you live – some will give poor yields in northern climes while others may die completely in a wet or very cold winter.

Marco seems to put up with occasional neglect (I’ve been known to forget where I’ve planted my garlic) and also has a very strong flavour. Surely everyone grows garlic for a strong flavour, why the hell would anyone grow a mild variety?

Preparation

Preparing For Garlic

As with onions garlic requires a soil with good drainage. We grow in a raised bed which tends to dry fairly quickly. If you have heavy soil or are growing at ground level then try and mix some grit into the soil to improve drainage. Sitting garlic in waterlogged soil is a recipe for disaster. I’ve never tried it but some grow garlic in pots to protect against adverse soil conditions and this may be an option. Above is pictured the bed that Hannah prepared. Please note that it is not as aesthetically pleasing as the onion bed that I prepared.

Planting

Spacing Of Garlic

Break the bulb up into its individual cloves and put each clove into the ground, about a hand-span apart from its neighbour in a row. Leave a slightly large gap between rows.

Garlic, as with onions, should be planted so the flat end is at the bottom and the pointy bit at the top. However, with garlic ensure the whole clove is covered, with the top just below the top of the soil.

In the picture above Hannah created a small trough to put the garlic in and then levelled it after taking this picture, covering the garlic completely

Care
 

As for onions

Pests
 

As for onions

Harvest
 

As for onions.