Allium cepa
Red onion, purple onion: its color has nothing to do with fashion, but with the anthocyanins in its skins—the same pigments found in red cabbage. It is also the mildest onion in the basket, with so little bite that it can be eaten raw without making your guests cry, making it the natural companion to salads and grilled dishes.
Characteristics:
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Mild flavor: noticeably less pungent than yellow onion, perfect raw.
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Rich color: purple skins and flesh veined with violet, highly decorative in the kitchen.
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Garden ally: it keeps carrot flies away from neighboring crops.
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Easy to grow: it even adapts to poor, stony soils.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: warm and in full sun.
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Soil: all types, including poor and stony soils, provided they are well drained. Absolute rule: never use fresh manure or nitrogen, which encourage leaf growth at the expense of the bulb and compromise storage.
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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 flops 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 companion planting:
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 vegetable garden.
Uses:
- Raw in salads or tartare, pickled, or confit. Its mildness and color make it the onion of choice for raw preparations, while yellow onion reigns over slow-cooked dishes.
Harvesting your own seeds:
Replant a few healthy, stored bulbs in spring: they will flower and set seed that same year. Harvest the flower heads when the capsules open to reveal black seeds. Isolate them from other onion varieties, which cross-pollinate easily. See how to save your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Volcanoes of Auvergne, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, sorted and carefully packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our conviction: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
The mild onion that adds color to your summer salads.
