A new forum all about alliums!

Welcome to the new alliums forum - now we can really know our onions, leeks, garlic and shallots!

This forum is for discussing issues growing all sorts of alliums: how to plant, propagate and breed them, growing perennially, and polycultural effects.

Share your onion experiences here!

Karl's potato onions grown from true seed

Source: Karl's thread


If you find a thread that belongs in the alliums forum that we missed, please report it, or reply with a link to it below. Thanks!!!

The forum looks great!  Thank you for taking the time to make the forum.

A couple weeks ago I found a bag in the back of the fridge with four slimy rotting spring onions and I tossed them in the compost. Today, I was adjusting the walls of the bin where they had been thrown, and I saw them growing, so I pull them out and transferred them to a vegetable bed. I wish now I'd taken pics to document it in the new forum! :-)

Christopher - I've learnt quite a bit about onions as I've been trawling the forums for onion related stuff. I didn't realise for example that spring onions tend to be one of those perennial bunching onions, although we normally only grow them as annuals - they will actually increase as a clump year on year Something else to try!

This has been my first year seriously growing alliums and I am hooked!

Now to explore the new forum.

Yay!  So excited!

I thought I'd done pretty well in my searches, but have since found several threads that belong in the new forum! Please help out by reporting any more I've missed :)

Nancy, do you know of potato onions?  They are a type of multiplier onion, in which each set planted will grow larger and produce 8 to 12 small bulbs,  I like them because they store very well (sometimes a year or longer) and as long as you save some of the smaller bulbs, (hard to do as they work great as scallions)
to plant again as sets, one will always have onions!!!

The main bulbs will reach about two inches, maybe two and a half inches in diameter, and are I think, mild in flavor.


Peace

Deane Adams wrote:Nancy, do you know of potato onions?  

Hi Deane - if I didn't before I do now! This great potato onion thread is just one of several I found about them. I'd love to try some multiplier/perennial onions - I just got some walking onions this year, but they are still in a little pot ready to plant out!

Sorry, I failed once again to search the site before posting, I now have another post-it note on this #&*#^@ laptop screen, to pleaseeeeeee do a search first!  
Old dogs, new tricks.  
Only thing I can add, I do not remember the name of the onions I grew, only that they were yellow.  

I do remember reading that the multiplier onions were once given as a wedding gift (1900's), so the new couple would always have a supply of onions.


Peace

Love the new forum! I have had hits and misses with alliums. It has been mostly a lot of misses with this family. I really wish I read about each variety more before I planted them. Thanks for collecting these posts!

Here is a summary of my experience:

1. Ramps - love the taste, they grow real well in the shade here in a wooded area. Bought them from a local store with roots attached (sold for eating). Poked holes in soil and pushed the ramps in. They all survived. Some made seeds. They are slowly multiplying 3 years in. I harvest very lightly. Primarily, I make ramp butter and keep it in the freezer.
2. Garlic. We eat TONS of garlic. Our first experience was none survived in our heavy clay. Next year, we made raised beds (without borders) - so much better! This year we are growing both hardnecks and softnecks. We save our own garlic, replanting the largest cloves, and sometimes bulbils. Started with good healthy seed garlic and it paid off.
3. Chives. Super easy to grow from seed. Love the flowers. Eventually basically got killed by onion aphid infestation that started with our Egyptian onions. I pulled them out to ensure the aphids don't overwinter.
4. Potato onions (yellow and red). Put them in a raised bed with soil from the store as regular onions would rot in our heavy clay no matter what. They did great for almost a year, but got attacked by onion aphids. I wrote a post about it. Eventually, they rotted likely due to attempting to spray the aphids off (can't blame the clay soil for this one).
5. Egyptian walking onions. Also did so good up until the onion aphids arrived. Ended up pulling any that survived to stop the infestation.
6. Garlic chives. Never really seemed to take off from seed and kind of struggled. Liked the taste though.
7. Annual onions - tried from seed and from sets. Short day varieties. Didn't seem to like our soil at all.
8. Elephant garlic - never survived for us with 2 trials, I forgot if it rotted or something dug it up. I didn't replant.
9. Shallots - never really produced for us. Although they were going in heavy clay. Didn't try to replant in a better spot.
10. NEW ALLIUM this year: red Welsh onions. These are perennial bunching onions. I plan to use the top for scallions. They do form clumps. I plan to use the bulb portion pickled (which is why I wanted to go with a red variety). I plan to mostly use them for scallions, though. Because I don't eat a lot of regular onions (i.e. the bulbs) - these may be just the alliums we need in addition to garlic. Seems like they can be harvested most of the year as well. We have actually grown bunching onions before years ago and didn't know they clumped, so we ate all of them treating them as annuals.

Edit: Forgot that we also tried to grow leeks once. They were pretty thin, but edible. Wasn't really worth the effort. Maybe alliums are not our thing We sure do love garlic, though.

Welsh onions sound interesting.That might be a new one ill try!