Circle M Farm

Last weekend, I got the year’s crop of onions started in flats. Now, just a week later, they are sprouted and reaching little green strings for the sky (which is really just a bunch of growlights strung on shelves in a sunny south-facing bay of windows). And not a moment too soon!

Onions and shallots are day-length sensitive which means they will only grow while the days are long enough. If they don’t get a good number of long days in the sun, they’ll be small. You’ve got to put them in the ground outside just about as soon as you can work the dirt, and if you are starting from seed, rather from sets, those seeds need to be started inside by February or March and transplanted in early spring. They’ll bulb up after the summer solstice, which this year will fall on June 21, and the size of those bulbs will depend on how much top growth they’ve achieved before that date.

As summer wears on, the tops will start to brown and fall over. Once half are down, the rest should be pushed over, and the onions should be harvested within a week. But when you pull them, you won’t store them immediately. Instead, they should be left to cure in the sunny field for about a week (covered with a tarp when it rains) and then brought into a cool place for storage. Complicated, huh?

The other members of the allium family – leeks, scallions, garlic, chives – are quite a bit less finicky. Scallions and leeks can be harvested anytime throughout the growing season, since they don’t bulb, though if you want those baseball-bat leeks you’ll have to start them in the house, too! Garlic cloves, simply pulled apart from the bulbs, get planted in the fall like tulips, covered with mulch, and pretty much take care of themselves until the following summer when they are ready to dig up and add to your tomato dishes. Chives are the easiest of all. Started from seeds that look just like those of onions, the plants grow into great sprawling clumps of strappy leaves that are perennial. In fact, they not only come up bigger every subsequent year, but any flowers that aren’t harvested before they go to seed will explode those seeds all over the garden and start a million more plants by the next spring. In my Chicago herb garden, the chives pretty much qualified as weeds I had to wrest from between the bricks of my walkways and the cracks of the sidewalk Now I try to harvest those flowers before they blow, and I use them as a tasty garlic-y treat added to salads and stir-fries.

All of these are “alimentary” because you eat them, as opposed to ornamental allia which produce fun, asteroid-like bombs of color to grow in the flower garden. In my front yard perennial beds I plant a few new native prairie starts every year, and last fall I added several of Nodding Wild Onion – which should give me pretty pinkish blooms this July and August. According to the field books, it will multiply readily and I don’t doubt it from my previous experience with chives. All allia produce their flowers on a single stalk with a pom-pom bloom on the end. And those pom-poms really do produce a shocking quantity of seeds.

This pretty Nodding Wild Onion shows the ornamental value of the allia family – which also includes lilies.

Depending on how these wild onions turn out, I may just let them spread among my perennials. Or maybe I’ll grab off the seeds and toss them into the pastures, so the animals can get some of the health benefits of eating allia, which are many. It’s well known that garlic is healthful, but all allia share the same traits. However, the stronger tasting allia provide the most benefit. Early American settlers used wild onions to treat colds, coughs, and asthma (and to repel insects!). In Chinese medicine, allia are used to treat coughs, bacterial infections, and breathing problems. They are known to decrease bronchial spasms and allergy-induced bronchial constriction in asthma patients.

Allia stimulate the growth of healthy bifidobacteria and suppress the growth of potentially harmful bacteria in the colon. In addition, they can reduce the risk of tumors developing in the colon. Studies in Greece have shown a high consumption of onions, garlic and other allium herbs to be protective against stomach cancer. They may lower blood lipids and blood pressure. Allia are a rich source of flavonoids, substances known to provide protection against cardiovascular disease. And they provide natural anticlotting agents.

Allia have documented antimicrobial properties and are effective against many bacteria including Bacillus subtilis, Salmonella, and E. coli. Whenever we have a sick animal here on the farm, or one that simply seems a bit stressed or under the weather, we feed garlic tincture. I’ve read in several of my antique herbals that if medicinal plants are made available to grazing animals, they’ll naturally gravitate to the food their body needs. It would be a cool experiment to grow these wild onions around the perimeters of the pastures and see when and which animals would consume them. Too bad we can’t rely on ourselves to eat in such a way!