Red Onion Seeds (Allium cepa)

Allium cepa

Red onion, purple onion: its color is not a matter of fashion but comes from the anthocyanins in its skins—the same pigments found in red cabbage. It is also the mildest onion in the basket, with little enough bite to be eaten raw without making diners cry, making it the natural companion to salads and grilled foods.

Characteristics:

• Mild flavor: noticeably less pungent than yellow onion, perfect raw.
• Deep color: purple skins and violet-veined flesh, highly decorative in the kitchen.
• Garden ally: it keeps carrot flies away from neighboring crops.
• Easy to grow: it even adapts to poor, stony soils.

Sowing advice:

• Exposure: warm and in full sun.
• Soil: all types, including poor and stony soils, provided they are well drained. Absolute rule: never use fresh manure or nitrogen, which promote foliage growth at the expense of the bulb and compromise storage.
• Method: sow under cover in winter or early spring, or directly in place from February onward, in rows spaced 25 cm apart, barely covering the seeds. See how to sow your seeds.

Care advice:

• Thin to 10 cm apart and hoe frequently: with its narrow foliage, the onion does not tolerate competition from weeds well.
• Stop watering as soon as the bulbs begin to swell.

Harvesting advice:

• Harvest when the foliage bends over and turns yellow, in dry weather. Note: red onions keep for less time than yellow onions—use them first and save the yellow ones for the end of winter.
• It can also be harvested young, as a spring onion, with its foliage.

Beneficial pairings:

• Plant it in alternating rows with the carrot for mutual protection against carrot and onion flies. It also grows well with strawberries, lettuces, and beets. Keep it away from peas and beans. See vegetable pairings in the kitchen garden.

Benefits for biodiversity:

• Its sulfur compounds disorient several pests, naturally reducing pressure on neighboring crops.
• Its spherical flower heads, if allowed to bolt, are among the most visited flowers in the kitchen garden.

Uses:

• Raw in salads, in tartare, pickled, or confit. Its mildness and color make it the onion for raw preparations, while yellow onion reigns over slow-cooked dishes.

Harvesting your own seeds:
Replant a few fine preserved bulbs in spring: they will flower and produce seeds that same year. Harvest the flower heads when the capsules open to reveal black seeds. Isolate them from other onion varieties, which cross readily with one another. See saving your seeds.

Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatments. Our belief: to restore gardeners' ability to sow again, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.

The mild onion that adds color to your summer salads.