- Goldy | The Stranger
- My god these spring onions are tasty!
A couple months ago I found a box of sorry looking onion starts near the checkout counter at McLendon’s. They were maybe six inches tall and a bit dried out, but only two bucks for a rubber band bound bunch of several dozen, so I figured what the hell? I took them home and haphazardly stuck them in the ground in an empty bed, and that was that.
Stupid me, I wasn’t thinking. I have my garden on a strict three year rotation, and this was one of the beds slated for tomatoes, which I usually put in the ground by the middle of May. The onion greens are now as much as a foot and a half tall, but they’ve only just started bulbing. Still, tomatoes take precedence over all, so last week I reluctantly started harvesting my premature onion crop.
Oh my fucking god are they delicious!
The box at McLendon’s claimed these were Walla Walla sweet onions, but this ain’t Walla Walla, so I wasn’t expecting much from Seattle’s cool, damp terroir. I’ve no idea how the flavor would have held up had these grown to maturity, but harvested as spring onions they are sweet and crunchy with just enough pungency to remind you you’re eating an onion. I’ve been chopping them up, greens and all, and eating them in salads and on sandwiches all week, or sometimes just whole like a scallion. I’ll miss ’em when they’re gone, and I’ll definitely be looking for onion starts again next spring.
FYI, my past attempts to direct sow onions from seed were largely foiled by slugs. If you too are battling these seedling munching gastropods, check out my new gardening column in this week’s paper for some fun helpful tips: “Gardening with Goldy: The Secret to Organic Slug Control.”