Onions are easy to grow, and they’re the first ingredient in my culinary toolbox. Almost every dish I make starts with caramelized onions, so my garden is never complete until I have grown my season’s worth of onions.
Since organic onions are so cheap, it can be easy to put off growing onions in favor of other, more exciting crops like tomatoes or asparagus. However, onions are easy and rewarding to grow! Read on for some basic tips and tricks for getting started with onions in your garden.
Varieties Of Onion
Onions come in many varieties that thrive in different climates and soils, but for culinary purposes, they fall into three broad categories: sweet onions, green onions and cooking onions.
Sweet Onions
甜洋葱,顾名思义,比烹饪洋葱含有更多的糖和更少的涩硫化合物。Varieties include the famous Walla Walla Sweet, the cute and tinyCipollinionion, and the classic red onion.
Their milder flavor makes sweet onions shine when eaten raw, sliced thinly on a sandwich, or adding zest to a salad.
Green Onions
Green onions, also called scallions or spring onions, are famous as a garnish or topping. Fish tacos would not be the same without them.
They have a fresh, mildly astringent flavor that is even milder than the sweet onions, but less sugary. These are simply the young, undeveloped shoots of any onion variety, so the flavors can vary.
Cooking Onions
Cooking onions include yellow, white, and some red onions, as well as specialty onions like theLong of Tropea. I group them together because they have a stronger flavor, more sulfur compounds.
Generally they are too strong to eat raw, even mixed into a dish, but they have enough body of flavor that they stand out in a cooked dish, unlike sweet onions, which tend to disappear under other flavors when cooked.
Other Alliums
Otherplants in the allium familythat share a culinary place with onions include chives,shallots,leeks,和大蒜。请参阅我们关于种植大蒜的文章,了解更多关于这种厨房主食的信息。
Which Variety Should I Grow?
As always, investigate which varieties grow well in your climate. Onions grow best in mild to temperate warm climates, but can be grown in a wide variety of places.
在作物生长季节的定期大雨会导致你的作物腐烂,如果土壤在暴雨期间不够干燥。Overwintering onion varieties that are planted in the fall and harvested in early spring grow well in warm climates like California, but are not hardy to freezing below about 20 degrees F.
Ask your local garden store for locally appropriate varieties, or check the information in the seed catalogue to find a good match. Pay attention to the temperature needed to germinate, and the length of the growing season for that variety.
Planting And Growing
Before planting, prepare your soil. Check out our guide here on soil testing and care.
If you are planting spring onions, starting them indoors or in a greenhouse gives you a head start on the season. Plant the seeds in a seed tray about a month to a month and a half before outdoor temperatures rise enough to plant. Follow directions on the seed packet for planting times and temperatures.
Onion seeds are tiny, and it’s ok to plant them close together in a seed tray. Onions don’t mind having their roots disturbed as much as many other plants, so when it is time to transplant them out into the garden, just pull the seedlings apart from each other.
为了给鳞茎足够的空间充分发育,洋葱需要种植在相距6英寸的地方。如果你将洋葱直接种在土壤中,你必须在它们发芽后稀释它们,以确保每个洋葱都有足够的空间长出一个大的鳞茎。否则,你会得到小而发育不良的洋葱。
Some people plant onions close together intentionally and wait to thin until the sprouts have grown into established green onions. That way you can grow scallions and bulb onions in the same row and get two crops at once!
因为洋葱长得又高又瘦,它们不太能和杂草竞争,这意味着你需要主动除草。
Other than that, onions are low-maintenance during the growing season. Keep them watered, but the soil should not be more than damp, because wet soil for long periods of time may cause onions to rot in the ground.
Harvesting
If you want scallions, you can harvest any variety of onions before they start to bulb. There are also particular scallion varieties that never set a bulb, which you can plant in the same way (although they can be spaced closer together, of course!) You can plant successions of scallion seeds every two weeks for a continual supply through the season.
在整个季节,你可以吃任何大小的洋葱,但在夏末,当多叶的颈部开始枯萎时,植物就结束生长了。如果洋葱生长结束后没有及时收获,它们就会开始在潮湿的土壤中腐烂。收割时,拉住洋葱的脖子,必要时松动周围的土壤。
Once your crop of onions is in, you get to have fun in the kitchen. Most of the best recipes start with onions. From putting them raw on sandwiches and salads, to basic building blocks of flavor in quiche, meatloaf or stir-fry, onions are never out of style. Of course, to really let your crop shine, caramelized an onion to put on a burger or as a side dish all on its own.
Storage
One of the things that makes onions such a familiar food in many cuisines is that they store well.
Different varieties of onion store better than others. Some sweet onions will last only a month or so. If are growing a large batch of onions and expecting them to last through the spring, be sure you pick astorage variety, or you may be in for a big disappointment.
Once you have harvested your onions, you will want to clean them for storage. Clean onions not only make less of a mess in your pantry, but they also keep better, since caked dirt holds moisture. If your soil has lots of clay or silt, the dirt can be very stubborn and hard to clean. Resist the temptation to run them under water to clean them, since moisture is the enemy of onion preservation. Instead, allow them to dry and then brush as much of the dirt as you can with your hands or a rag. For a perfectly clean onion, peel off the outer layer of skin, but remember you are removing a protective layer.
After harvest, storage onions need to becured, just like garlic. Curing is a drying process, which takes a couple of weeks to a month depending on your climate.
Onions should be spread out on a dry surface so that they don’t touch one another, or hung in bunches by their leafy necks, in a dry area with good circulation. Warm temperatures around 75 degrees F are ideal, so depending on your climate, you can aim to be harvesting onions before the last warm week of September, or the first cool week of September.
The onion skins will loosen and turn dry and brittle, like the onions you buy in the store. Once the onion necks are completely dry, the onions are done curing. At that point, you can put the onions together in boxes or baskets for storage.
洋葱应该储存在阴凉、黑暗、最重要的是干燥的地方。它们可能会发芽,但没关系。和发芽的土豆不同,发芽的洋葱仍然很好吃——把绿色的嫩芽切碎,就像葱花一样。
When onions go bad, they will start to mold and turn slimy. Like with all storage crops, check your stores periodically and remove any that are beginning to go bad. This will help all your onions last longer. There’s a reason they say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.
Related Posts:Growing Leeks
There is no replacement for the feeling of looking at your dinner plate and realizing that you personally grew absolutely everything on it. And that feeling would not be complete without the onion.
So many meals include onions, think how much more local and self-sufficient your diet could be if you popped some onions seeds in the ground. Even though onions are cheap and easy to buy, they are also cheap and easy to grow!
How To Caramelize Onions The Right Way
Is there anything better than the sweet flavor of caramelized onions on a sandwich or as a side dish? This is the secret my mom taught me to perfect caramelized onions is to cook them low and slow.
It’s faster to brown the onions on high heat and then cover them until they soften, but they can caramelize unevenly or even char. To get a truly even caramelization, start heating the onions slowly with low heat on the stovetop with enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan.
- During the first part of cooking, cover the pan to retain moisture.
- Only once the onions have turned translucent and soft, uncover them and turn the heat up from low to medium-low, stirring occasionally, until they brown to taste.
- 这是一个耐心的烹饪过程!根据你一次要煮多少洋葱,大概需要20到40分钟。
dionelsays
A CULTIVAR CEBOLLAS .ME GUSTAN TODAS .GRACIAS.
Mary Daileysays
I am just beginning to start growing onions. Surprisingly, some winter onions do great here in Arkansas. Thank you for the great tips. I have learned a lot from this article.