Onions: Grow Them, Enjoy Them

Onions are versatile. May be used in sandwiches, soups, stews or simply to add flavour to a wide variety of foods. What can be better than cheese and onions together in an omelette or as a grilled cheese sandwich or just plain on a Kaiser? I enjoy a thin slice of Spanish onion with an aged cheddar cheese on whole wheat bread or a bagel.

Know your onions. There are two types of onions, summer onions and winter onions. Summer onions are fresh onions that come in yellow red and white and have a fairly thin skin.

These are the sweet onions, suited to salads and sandwiches. It is their high-water content that makes them sweet.

The winter onions also come in red, yellow and white but have several layers of thick and dark skin. These onions are ideal for storage and what you want on those cold winter nights when you want to add some zest to a stew or soup.

Approximately, 87 percent of the onions that are commercially grown are yellow; white account for five percent and red eight.

Yellow onions are very versatile and are used for just about all types of cooking and are what make French Onion soup so tasty.

The reds are great in salads and sandwiches but can also be delightful when tossed on a grill as part of a kebab for example.

While onions are identified with Mexican cooking, although I have to admit there have been times when a white onion was all that I had and it ended up in my cheese sandwich.

Now if you want fresh onions for your cooking needs then grow your own. You can grow them for both immediate uses and for storage so that you do not run out of these culinary delights during those harsh and sometimes way too long winter weeks.

Growing Onions: Planting Onion sets

Ph:

Onions, pickled 3.70 - 4.60

Onions, red 5.30 - 5.80

Onion white 5.37 - 5.85

Onions, yellow 5.32 - 5.60

The most effective way to grow onions is to plant onion sets. An onion set is a small bulb, to 1 inch in diameter. Onion sets are produced under conditions that rapidly produce a small bulb which, when planted, will grow a larger bulb. You can buy onion sets at the local plant centre.

Onions can handle some frost and, in general, do not mind the cool and wet weather of spring. They prefer soil that is rich and drains well.

You can plant onion sets from two to four weeks before the last frost. Buy bulbs that are less than ¾ inches (19 mm) in diameter.

Space the onion sets approximately 4-6" (10-15 cm) apart, depending on the size of the mature bulb. Make sure that you gently press the bulbs into the soil about an inch (2.5 cm) deep and make sure to plant them so that their pointed tips just break the surface.

Happy Growing

 

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