Know Your Onions

Never grown your own vegetables? The allium family is a great way to start. Known for their wonderful culinary uses, onions, leeks, chives, shallots and garlic also have major benefits for the ecosystem that is your garden.

- Kobus Kritzinger

Onions, leeks and chives are some of the first crops I encourage beginner vegetable gardeners to plant. They taste great, they look pretty, and there is very little that can go wrong with them in terms of pests and diseases – plus they fulfil many other functions for the avid organic gardener.

Firstly, alliums are great companion plants: with the exception of peas and beans, alliums get along with all other plants. Pests hate their strong flavour so much, they even provide protection for more vulnerable neighbours. Aphids and flea beetles, those little critters responsible for the tiny holes in rocket and mustard leaves, can’t stand the smell of any member of the onion family, especially garlic. Chive flowers attract pollinators to the garden and should therefore be planted under all fruit trees.

Almost all allium leaves are edible and have subtle variations in flavour. The leaves are at their best in early spring, before the plants start to flower. As luck would have it, this is also when the home grower tends to run out of onions that would have been harvested and dried at the end of summer.

Many wild and perennial species are much revered in other parts of the world. Bear leeks grow wild around Europe and are used to make the most divine pesto. Egyptian walking onions form clusters of bulblets at the end of each leaf stalk. As these “topsets” grow in size and weight, they eventually touch the soil and take root, and the whole process starts again.

Alliums prefer average gardening soil that is slightly acidic. Drainage is very important to avoid fungal diseases and rot. These plants won’t do well if they’re not planted in full sun, and they don’t like freshly manured soil.