July 4, 2024

VIDEO: Allium Production with Pat Battle


Treasured for their culinary, and even some medicinal properties, allium crops such as garlic, onions, shallots, chives and leeks provide gratifying yields, when their needs are met. This class provides the tools and techniques required to achieve your allium production goals. Instructor Pat Battle teaches us about their genetics, soils and soil preparation, timing, seeds, as opposed to sets, seedling production, crop care, harvest, best storage varieties and preparation methods to ensure successful storage. Discover the diversity of perennial alliums such as bunching onions, walking onions, potato onions and perennial leeks. Pat will also touch on alliums’ nutritional and culinary attributes and how to make the most of them in your kitchen.

9 thoughts on “VIDEO: Allium Production with Pat Battle

  1. There are SOOO many alliums. Earlier this year I discovered Stephen Barstows 'edimentals' forest garden. He has more varieties than I could ever hope to learn

  2. Thanks Living Web. It's always lovely to see a new contribution. It sounds as though Pat intended to cover more material than presented in this clip. Is there a part 2 in production?

  3. Thanks for this video.  It's nice to see someone covering some of the more esoteric types of allium other than the main types.
    Once my chives start flowering I leave them to it as the bees love them (an I want to support a healthy local population of bees)then cut them right back afterwards so they resprout.  The flowers of the chives and the garlic chives are also edible and add a light flavour and splash of colour to salads.  I'm also trying to grow Black Isle Blush chives which have bi-coloured flowers. Walking onion bulbils make great sets for scallions or pickling onions.  There's a non-flowering form of welsh onion called Perutil so you don't have to miss out when they're flowering.  Rakkyo is an Asian bunching onion grown mainly for the slim bulbs – although I haven't got enough to try them yet as my patch is little.I grow Elephant garlic as a perennial leek, cutting off the stem and leaving the bulb in the ground.  I also grow 5 other types of perennial leeks (Babington, Sand Leek, Three Cornered Leek, oerprie, poireau des vignes).

  4. Another "niche" for potato onions (which we call "multiplier onions" here) – their greens are highly decorative & don't tend to go limp/brown. For this reason, I'm planting lots of them in my urban yard, which I am gradually turning over to 100% food production.

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