You can’t cook a savory meal without using at least one of these alliums — onions, garlic, shallots, leeks or chives — but many of us shy away from growing them in our gardens.
We shouldn’t, says Contra Costa Master Gardener Janet Miller, who also oversees Our Garden in Walnut Creek. Besides being tasty, alliums — the family that includes all of these slightly smelly, wonderfully tasty bulbs — are loaded with anti-oxidants and nutrients that our bodies need.
Growing them can be a bit tricky, Miller says, but she has tips to make sure we succeed.
- Whether you’re growing onions or garlic, all members of the allium family need full sun.
- Alliums need good drainage. They actually grow best in sandy soils, but in the Bay Area, most of our soils are heavy clay, so to develop a better growing medium, add lots of amendments and compost to your beds before planting. Don’t skimp.
- Loosen soil down to 18 inches to create lots of room for water and air flow, and to help the roots make their way through the soil.
- Alliums are heavy feeders of nitrogen and phosphorus, so add blood meal or cotton seed meal for nitrogen, and bone meal for phosophorus.
- Alliums don’t do well if they get too much water, and they don’t care for overhead or popup sprinklers. Drip irrigation systems provide the best results.
- Just as you do with your tomatoes, you need to rotate your crops, avoiding planting alliums in the same place each year. Alliums are prone to soil-born diseases so allow at least two seasons to go by between plantings in the same spot. That’s not hard to do, even in a small garden, because alliums don’t need a lot of room.
Onions
- There are three ways to plant onions — by seed directly in the ground, by sets and by seedlings. Growing from seedlings is the easiest and the most likely to produce good results.
- Most seedlings come with several in a pot. You’ll need to separate them and plant one by one, about 6 to 8 inches apart.
- You can plant seedlings in the late winter to early spring.
- Onions also come in varieties based on day length — long, interim and short. This is determined by the amount of daylight they need to produce. In our area, interim day length is the best, although you might be able to grow long day.
- You can plant onions now, but they will be susceptible to frost, depending on where you live. Use a light mulch to protect them, but not so much that they could get water logged.
- Another thing to consider is the shelf life of the onion varieties. Some will last up to six months in storage, others much less.
- You’ll harvest onions when the green leaves start to die back, but before the onion sends up a seed shoot. The onion will still be good if you wait too long — the center will just become hard and there will be less onion to use. Onions that have produced a seed stalk also will not store well and should be used immediately.
- After harvesting, lay the onions in a single layer in the shade, with their leaves still attached. Once the leaves have completely dried, carefully trim them off and store the onions.
Leeks
- Leeks are much easier to grow than onions, partly because they don’t produce a bulb that you need to worry about.
- Plant by seed or seedling. Grow over the winter and harvest as you need them. They won’t start to seed until the soil warms up.
- Most people prefer the long white neck on the leek. To get this, you need to plant in a trench and continue to pile the soil up around the leek as it grows. The leek is fine to use, however, if you don’t do this. It’s a visual thing.
Shallots
- Shallots have a milder flavor than onions, are slightly smaller and they multiply under ground, increasing your bounty.
- Shallots do best in the spring, but they can be planted now.
- Carefully break the shallot bulb into cloves, trying to keep as much of their protective peeling on them as possible. Bury them so just the tip of the shallot is showing, then cover with a light mulch. Plant them 8 to 10 inches apart so they’ll have plenty of room to bulb up.
- Like onions, pull them when the leaves start to turn brown. They’ll need to cure, or dry, for about a month before using.
- The smaller the shallot clove that you plant, the larger the bulb you’ll harvest.
Garlic
- Garlic can handle the cold and actually benefits from overwintering. It should be planted in October, but a word of warning — it won’t be ready to harvest until June, so plant it in an area that you won’t need for your spring garden.
- Unlike shallots, the bigger the clove you plant, the bigger the garlic bulb you’ll harvest.
- There are two general types of garlic, hard neck and soft neck. Hard neck puts out scapes as it grows, which can be snipped off and used in cooking. Hard neck also has fewer cloves in a grown bulb.
- Soft neck is popular for making garlic braids, but it doesn’t produce scapes. The bulb will have more cloves, and the taste generally is milder and you can store it longer.
Chives
- If you dedicate a small corner of your garden to chives, you’ll have a perennial crop that will continue to produce for years.
- Chives do reseed, but it’s not that vigorous or threatening, and it’s easy to contain by pulling up any wanted plants or cutting off the flowers before the seed dries and disperses.
- To harvest chives, just snip off the tops and use them in your dishes.
- For a more savory chive, try garlic chives.
