Our gardening expert advises on planting for a bumper crop
If it weren’t for that blasted fly, I’d be queen of onions. The allium leaf miner shreds any whiff of the enzyme alliinase – it takes down leeks, bunching onions and garlic, and the only sure way around it is to barricade your crops with the finest of mesh netting or confuse the female so thoroughly with a blanket of other plants that she can’t find her way through to your crop (mint is quite effective as long as you can keep it from taking over). For the last few years I’ve been prepared to battle only on behalf of garlic, but I miss shallots, so I’ll darn all the holes in my mesh and protect those, too.
You have two choices with growing onions and shallots: you can either sow in early spring or plant as sets. The latter are immature onions or shallots that grow into mature bulbs. These are fairly easy to grow; you just nestle them into the soil so only the neck is sticking out.
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