The Almighty Onion

Image Gallery that's me harvesting onions, long before the rest of the vegetables have come up. PHOTO: WALTER CHOROSZEWSKI

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GARDEN & YARD

By Mort Mather

Planting, harvesting, storing, and loving onions, shallots, leeks, and garlic.

Did you know that onions are an aphrodisiac? That they decrease the likelihood of heart attack and stroke? That they reduce cancer risk? You are probably unaware that it is illegal for barbers in a certain Pennsylvania town to eat onions between the hours of 7 A.M. and 7 P.M., or that ancient Egyptians placed their right hand on an onion to take an oath. Have you ever used an onion to revive someone from a faint or to relieve nasal congestion? How about rubbing a cut onion on your windshield to prevent frost? Or rubbing gold with an onion to clean it? Have you ever eaten an onion?

The last, of course, was a silly question. Even people who don't think they like onions probably eat them regularly. I can't imagine cooking without onions. When I prepare a meal, there always seems to be an appropriate place for an onion. Even a grilled cheese sandwich is enhanced, for my palate, with some onion shavings cooked inside. As a lazy gardener interested in eating as much food from my own garden as possible, onions are the perfect vegetable: they are easy to plant, easy to grow, easy to store, and easy to cook.

Growing Basics

There is only one feature about growing onions that must be kept in mind: the length of day. They grow in two phases. The production of leaves is the first phase; this starts when the plant starts growing, when the temperature is warm enough for plants that wintered in the ground or for those recently planted. It ends when the bulb starts to form, which is dependent on the length of day. The size of the bulb depends on the number and size of the leaves at the time it starts to bulb. Each leaf represents a layer of the onion and the thickness of each layer is relative to the size of the leaf. We don't want the day-length to trigger the plant to bulb until there are many leaves of good size. In the northern latitudes of the United States, day length on June 21 reaches about fifteen hours. In Portland, Maine, our days are longer than fifteen hours from May 24 to July 15. In Vedalia, Georgia, the longest day is about fourteen hours. If we planted Vedalia onions in Maine, they would barely get started in the spring before the day length triggered them to bulb.

How do we know which varieties to buy? Some catalogs will indicate latitudes for different varieties. You can probably count on sets purchased locally. The only way you are really likely to get into trouble is if you buy seeds from a catalog company that is at a substantially different latitude than you are.

Planting in Sets

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