Vegetables - Onions and shallots
Onions can be grown from seed (see spring onions) but since I find growing onions challenging, the only way I can get a half-decent crop is to grow them from sets. These are small bulbs, and I sow them in February. The small bulbs grow into the larger onions, so you need to plant them far enough to allow room for this growth.
The main problem I find with onions is that they just don't grow large enough! It may be that a sandy, dry soil is not good for onions.
The other problem is that the plants bolt, which means that they form seed heads. It's best to nip off these flower heads, as they take energy from the bulbs. The sets are supposed to be heat-treated to stop this, but they still do!
After a bit, the greenery dies down. It's a good idea to dig them up before the leaves completely disappear, as otherwise it can be hard to find all the bulbs! I dig them up and leave them on the soil to dry off. Or at least that's the theory but it seems to trigger rain when I do this! It doesn't seem to harm the crop. You can see, below, that this year the sets contained bulbs of diferent colours.
Shallots are grown from sets exactly like onions, but they grow in a different way. Instead of the small bulb growing into a bigger one, it forms lots of bulbs. So shallots are smaller than onions. You break this cluster of bulbs into the individual bulbs before using.
Usually I don't manage to grow most of the onions large enough for use as proper onions, so I pickle them.
| My recipe for | pickled onions |
Click on photos for large version.
© Jo Edkins 2020 - Return to Garden index