Onions

This has not been a good onion and garlic year for me - they want a lot of water and the weed competition did not help.

Basically, there are two main onions I grow - not counting chives, spring onions and the perennial Dutch onion I never use, but would never throw out. And it doesn't include the Garlic and Poor Man or Russian Giant Garlic - those tall ornamental ones that go feral.The ones I grow seriously are the Potato Onion and the Tree Onion.

Tree Onions are the ones that form little bulblets on top that you plant the next year (although you can, and some suggest you should, alternate with offsets). These produce a small, tasty brown onion that keeps well, and is good for using green, before they mature, as shallots.

The others are Potato Onions, which produce a large clump of onions from one offset. It is a small, brown onion on maturity too, that keeps well, and I also use it as a shallot.

Many years ago an old gardener gave me the maxim of planting my onions on the shortest day and harvesting on the longest day - and it is a pretty good one to follow - if I remember.

I have heaps and heaps of spare offsets of the potato onions and a few of the tree onions if any locals want to try them. I will put some out in the wheelbarrow on the nature strip this afternoon.