Onion lovers, start planting

The onion family Allium contains both culinary and ornamental plants that we grow in the garden — and a few that fill both of these roles.

Beautiful onions might seem like a misnomer, but few would deny that bulbs such as Globemaster, with a 10-inch sphere of violet purple flowers on 3-foot stems, are anything other than beautiful. There are even native wildflowers such as the little lavender pink nodding onion.

Most of us are more likely to find our onion-family plants in the vegetable garden. Here we can find scallions or bunching onions, leeks, garlic, bulbing onions, chives, shallots, garlic chives and others.

Garlic and shallots are generally grown by separating and planting the individual cloves from the bulbs. They are planted in the autumn garden and harvested around the beginning of summer.

Planting onion sets is similar. Small individual bulbs are planted in early spring for harvest later in the summer. The remaining onion family plants are easy to raise from seed with a little patience.

Now is the time to start.

Scallions, leeks, chives and garlic chives can all be directly sown in garden soil, but my preference is to start them inside in small flats.

Styrofoam trays that mushrooms and many other grocery store veggies come packaged in are just about perfect for this. Punch some holes in the bottom with a screwdriver and fill them full of good, well draining potting mix.

Do not use garden soil for this or you will be starting weeds along with your crops.

Sow the seed on the surface of the moist soil and cover it with a pinch or two of soil. Make sure the soil is moistened through and put your flat in a warm, sunny spot.

Sprouts should appear in 10 days or less. They are thin and spindly, looking like round grass blades. About a month later, the seedlings can be transplanted.

They will likely have developed long, white roots. I like to move them into cell packs or small individual pots before I transplant them into the garden. This gives the plant a chance to form a strong, contained root system. Chives and garlic chives can be bunched together in the cells to form a little clump. They will continue to expand into a large clump as they mature.

Plants should be given a weak, liquid fertilizer at this point. A few days after transplanting to individual containers, the plants will have adjusted and can be moved outside to a cold frame or other protected spot in preparation for garden planting. Onion-family plants are tough as nails when it comes to cold weather, but you still need to acclimate your house-grown seedlings.

All the edible onion plants need to be in full sun for at least six hours a day. They like a soil rich in nitrogen that is well drained.

Because onions have shallow roots and their foliage is sparse, they have little protection from weed competition.

They should receive an inch of water a week. Both leeks and scallions can be planted into the garden a few inches apart and a little bit deeper than they were in their flat.

But the best leeks are those with long, white shafts. To produce these, you have to plant the seedlings in a trench.

Dig a trench 8 to 12 inches deep. Throw some compost in the bottom inch and plant the leek seedling in the bottom. Space the seedlings a few inches apart.

As they grow, the soil is gradually filled back in until the trench is full. You can then start mounding soil up against the leek shaft. The edible part of a leek is the white shaft that is buried beneath the soil.

The more leek you have under the ground, the more you will have to eat. Leeks are usually grown through the season for harvest in the fall, though there is no harm in harvesting a few young ones.
Scallions are ready two months after sowing.

Chives and garlic chives are both perennials that are commonly found in herb gardens. Their foliage is snipped for harvest.

Both will bear flowers in their second year worthy of the flower border.

Chive flowers are lavender pink and can be used to add some color to salads. The flowering stem of chives is woody and not edible. Garlic chives have a flavor that marries the onion of chives with a light garlic taste. Their flowers are white and borne in late summer. Both of these will form an abundant number of seeds after flowering. These are easy to collect to share with friends — or you can start over again.