Alliums

A while ago, I received a new variety of garlic to try in my garden. It was a hardneck garlic that I decided to keep in my fridge until it was time to plant. Much to my surprise, it started to sprout, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Can you even plant sprouted garlic?…

Perennial onions make a beautiful addition to any vegetable garden. Not only are they easy to prepare, but once they get going you can harvest them at any size, at any time of year.  While most onions are known as annual vegetables, grown from bulb sets in spring or late fall, nearly all types of…

There are dozens of readily available cultivars of garlic, but few of us stop to consider the one most basic factor when deciding what garlic to grow: the difference between hardneck and softneck garlic.  It’s not just that the bulbs of hardneck and softneck garlic form differently, they taste different, and perform better or worse…

If you are looking to grow the biggest and most beautiful onion bulbs this year, bolting can throw a big wrench in those plans. Fortunately, there are several ways to handle bolting in your onion crop and steps you can take to prevent it from happening next year. To prevent your onions from bolting, make…

Knowing when to start leeks from seed to get a big harvest is one of the holy grails of vegetable gardening.  In this article, I’m going to share some family secrets to the perfect leek, and some wisdom of my own from trial and error. Fundamentally though, this article aims to give you a definitive…

On paper, leeks and garlic should grow well together, but in a no-dig garden, particularly on small plots where space is at a premium, there are better ways to use every inch of your soil than inter-planting competing species.