White Lisbon spring onions are a double award-winning variety, which are deemed THE salad spring onion. They hold accreditation from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) and also the RHS Award of Garden Merit.
Spring onions are so easy to grow, and they’ll grow just about anywhere. I’ve decided to sow my onions next to my Early Nantes Carrots because the mixture of scents will keep any pests, such as carrot, fly at bay. Much like the carrots,
I started out by laying a string line and then created drills that were around 1.5cm deep. I made sure that the rows were around 25-30cm apart. I was quite generous when sowing the seeds in the drills, so I suspect I may get the odd stray poking through between the drills. I then covered the seedlings and gave them a water.
Unlike the carrots, there’s no need to thin the White Lisbon onions, you can just pick them and use them for a salad as you go. Sping onions are great for adding a little bit of bite to a salad, but personally, I can’t wait to use it in a stir-fry and I’ll be sure to update you with any recipes when I come to use them.
The relationship between man and onion goes back as far 3200 BC. The spring onion is thought to have originated in the Far East. Chives and spring onion are detailed in Chinese history books from 2000 BC onwards.
When onions eventually arrived in Rome they were known as the word onion from the Latin word Unio, which translates into ‘large pearl’.
In Middle English, it developed into ‘unyon’, which then become ‘onion’. The onions, or the history of, really does have several layers to it.
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