Slime onions: care, cultivation
Slime onion is a perennial plant, its bulbs are not used for food, they eat only tender green leaves with a pleasant garlic aroma. Onion greens contain many vitamins and mineral salts. The plant got its unusual name due to the transparent slimy sap that flows from the leaves when they break.
Slime onion is a perennial that grows wild in Siberia and Central Asia, in meadows and rocky slopes. In household plots, this type of onion is grown for feathers.
Slime onion blooms with small pink flowers collected in an umbrella inflorescence
The plant is frost-hardy, its green leaves begin to grow in early spring, when there is still no other greenery. They are used in cooking for salads and as a spice.
A slime onion has a rhizome to which a bulb is attached. Six or eight flat leaves with rounded ends are brought together at the base of the stem. They are very juicy, give off juice when broken, taste without strong bitterness and pungency. The onion blooms in a spherical multi-flowered umbrella with small white or pink flowers.
Features of growing slime onions
Perennial onions are propagated by dividing the bush and seeds. Sow seeds in the garden in the spring. Shoots appear in about a month. When the first 2 or 3 leaves grow, the plants are planted at a distance of 15-20 cm, as they grow strongly over time.
By dividing the bush, onions are propagated in late summer or early autumn, so that the planted plants will get stronger by the onset of frost. Roots and leaves are pruned at the delots, watered abundantly and shaded from the bright sun.
Young leaves of onions grow back during the entire warm period, their growth stops only in late autumn after the onset of frost. Therefore, the plant needs frequent watering and feeding.
In the spring, when the leaves begin to grow, the onions are fed with complex fertilizer or manure infusion. And at the end of summer, potash-phosphorus fertilizers are applied.
In addition to watering and fertilizing, the plant needs weeding and loosening of the soil. It is especially important to remove weeds in the beds with young onions so that they do not drown out its growth. The plant is very resistant to disease, which allows fresh, unprocessed leaves to be cut off for food at all times.
To obtain high-quality greenery, it is advisable to renew the beds with onions every 5 years, planting old bushes or growing young onions from seeds. Onions sown with seeds begin to be cut only in the 3rd year of cultivation.
Caring for a slime onion is simple, the main thing is not to forget to water and weed in time. Having planted it in your garden, you can cut fresh vitamin greens from early spring to late autumn.