Chop chop! Time to grow spring onions
I’VE loved spring onions, or salad onions as they are sometimes called, since I was a kid, when I used to eat them whole, dipping the end into a Dairylea triangle.
These days I’m slightly more sophisticated, chopping them into salads, soups, stir fries and omelettes, and even pickling them with spices in apple cider vinegar.
They’re a doddle to grow from seed, and although bunched ones are relatively cheap to buy, growing your own allows you to pick from named varieties that vary in taste and even colour.
Among those that will excite your taste buds are ‘North Holland Blood Red’ with its striking red stems and green tops, and ‘Totem’, whose crisp white stems have a strong, punchy flavour.
Making its debut in 1787 and grown for its mild, white stems, ‘White
Lisbon’ has long been the most popular variety with gardeners.
Spring onions prefer light, stonefree soil in a sunny spot. One option is to grow them in pots. Fill a 12-18in container with multi-purpose compost, firm and scatter seeds thinly over the surface. Cover with a ½in layer of sieved compost, place in a sunny spot and spray the surface with water. Thin out seedlings to ¾in apart when they’re large enough to handle. Spring onions are more or less a trouble-free crop, but downy mildew disease can sometimes strike – if you see a white fluffy fungal growth on plants, remove those affected to prevent it spreading.
As for looking after them, there’s little to do, though they require watering regularly to prevent a check to growth. Most varieties will be ready for harvesting in eight to ten weeks, when they are roughly 6in tall.