Ask an onion what it thinks of humans, and if it could talk, it would tell a story that begins before the dawn of modern agriculture. Ask its Allium cousins, including leeks, chives, garlic, and shallots, and we end up with different parts of a global story that has followed us right into the modern era. What is that story about, and what can Alliums teach us about the present and future meaning of community?
When I first started growing, I had a garden in an urban setting. I would buy onion sets from the box store and plant them in an over-crowded raised bed. They got smothered by unpruned, barely trellised tomatoes and forgotten. Eventually, I’d find them again when clearing out the bed at the end of the growing season. They were tiny by grocery store standards, but it didn’t stop me from cutting them up for just about any meal I’d make until they were gone. They didn’t ask much, and they didn’t take much space in the garden bed. Yet, as we all know, they pack a punch of flavor. That punch hits you right in the eyes if you aren’t careful.
Kitchen witch hack: use science goggles when cutting up a large amount of onions if you have watery eyes like me! Especially if you’re using fresh or newly cured onions that were locally grown and haven’t been sitting in the back of a warehouse for months. There’s a lesson there about bigger is not always better, and quality over quantity.
Onion family crops are so cherished by Caleb and I that we named our kid after them. I stand by it. Not only does he love garlic and onions (often asking for “onion soup” at dinner time), he also does a good “onion face” when he’s not pleased with something.
Nowdays when it comes to growing onions, we do things differently, and at a larger scale. First of all, we grow all of our alliums from seed (except garlic, which is grown from the clove. More on that later). Alliums are the first seeds we start in March, as soon as the greenhouse is ready to go. Their little monocot leaves soon emerge and stand straight up, like a green toothpick in a cube of potting mix.
We trim those to 2-3” tall, before they start to get top-heavy and bend over. These baby onion trimmings are peppery and delicious, perfect for adding to a garlic mustard pesto or chopped on top of eggs. Later on in my farming career, I tried chive flowers and onion leaves. Everything except the seed and root of the domesticated onions is edible and delicious, and ready almost year-round.
While the onions are just sprouting in the greenhouse in early spring, the garlic in the beds outside are waking up. They were planted the previous fall. They are more like a little green hand raised for a question in class than their tiny toothpick cousins in the greenhouse. I can’t help but take more or less the same photo of garlic emerging from a thickly straw-mulched bed every year. I have several versions of this same photo, taken years apart. It’s the flag that signals the take off, the start of the spring race.
Eventually, over about 6-8 weeks, the tender baby onions get hardened-off and then transplanted outside. We’ve planted them by hand, which is a difficult thing to learn, and even harder to show someone how to do. You have to be both delicate enough not to break the leaf or roots, but firm enough that they won’t blow away or dry out. When it comes to planting thousands of these things, you also can’t be too slow about it.
My sweetheart, Caleb, pointed out to me recently that sometimes, birds making their first nests of the season with little greenery available at that time tend to swoop in and snatch the baby onion plants. Establishing onions for the season takes time, patience, and persistence.
Then come the weeds, like crabgrass whose rhizomes will pierce right through a succulent onion bulb like a pipeline through a wetland. The broadleaf weeds, like Galinsoga (which turns out to be edible?), pigweed, lambsquarters, smartweed, plantains, dandelions, and Dog-forbid bindweed take their shot all at once in the weeks of late May/early June. The slender monocot leaves of the onions get easily blocked from sunlight under the umbrellas of broader-leaved, faster-growing plants. If they don’t stay weeded in the beginning, they will disappear without a trace.
Next comes the heat, for which onions need to be well-rooted and watered regularly. Many onions are very well adapted to heat, given their suspected origin in the Middle East. Once thought to have originated in central Asia, there is now archeological evidence that suggests people were cultivating Alliums for food in Iran and West Pakistan even earlier.. Garlic and onions were among some of the first crops ever cultivated in the Fertile Crescent. As those ancient farmers also knew, well-timed irrigation during the maturation phase is key to a good bulb size and quality.
At this point of the season, we are 24 weeks deep in growing this year’s batch of onions. The crew has worked hard to keep them on track, returning again and again to clear weeds and maintain watering during dry spells. Thankfully, the onions have rewarded us. Many beautiful bulbs were pulled from the wet mud after the downpour over the weekend. They are now sorted on trays, curing with many fans on them in the barn loft. The curing (or drying) process is what makes them suitable for storage over the winter.
We also grow a lot of scallions that we harvest on a frequent basis, using the paper-pot transplanter. We have a large perennial bed of chives as well. I tried garlic chives, but they couldn’t withstand wilting long enough for my customers.
Most importantly, to us, is the garlic. It’s in the soil for as long as it takes to gestate a child! We’ve been saving our own seed garlic now for almost a decade, and in that time we have selected for best performance for organic production on this specific site. We grow hard neck garlic, known for its woody stalk and big, intensely pungent cloves. The varieties are Asian Tempest and German White.
We harvested all the garlic scapes in early summer, which provides a garlicy flavor and tides us over for the bulbs. Harvesting them also increases bulb size. A couple of weeks ago, we pulled all the mature garlic when the tips of the leaves turned brown and dry. We then sorted out 40% of the largest, best bulbs to save for replanting for next year. The bigger the clove planted, bigger the bulb harvested.
Next, we gathered in the shade and trimmed off the dirty roots. It’s a joyful communal activity that we look forward to every year. It’s easy to imagine how our pre-ag ancestors felt while making off with the garlic loot to trim, clean, and cool off under a canopy of trees. Giddy and smelly, stomach growling over the fresh garlic aroma. Sorting out the damaged ones to be used first (aka “house garlic”).
Finally, the garlic is tied together in bundles of 10 or so with baling twine, and suspended from rafters in a well-ventilated indoor area. Again, lots of fans. A garage works fine for this.
In all of this practical information, there are secret messages and metaphors left like breadcrumbs by the onions. Each year, I am reminded of them, and each year, I see more that I somehow missed before.
The lessons the Alliums have to teach us about community come easier when we have a common definition of what community is, so first I’ll attempt to define it based on my (current, evolving!) understanding/experience. That word gets thrown around a lot, to the point where it can mean nothing and everything.
First, what community is not:
A group that is brought together by the fact that they agree on something, or share views and interests. Interests, views, and opinions change over time. As they should. If being in agreement is the point of a community, then it’s destined to break when people inevitably change and grow their perspectives.
A strictly human thing. Members of a community can and should include other species.
A target audience/sales demographic. The word community can get co-opted often when someone is selling something.
A following on social media. If you can simply unsubscribe from a community or a community member, it’s not a community, it’s an online presence/performance of community.
It doesn’t have to be a friend group that hangs out on the weekends. To be in community with someone, they don’t need to know your secret thoughts or have a personality that you’re 100% compatible with. In fact, most true, radical communities exist with people who might not have much in common, except their common needs being met.
What community is, in practice, in modern and ancient times:
Community is what you get when people combine their knowledge, skills, and labor for collective, mutual, and future benefit.
A group where individuals find and create an identity that is based on the collective, on shared traditions, and often, the land base they share. Animals, plants, fungi, bodies of water, and soil are all active members of that community.
While it does meet some deep evolutionary and practical needs for us, it also challenges us. It requires tools, skills, and agreed upon practices for maintaining effective communication.
It’s a deep investment that requires commitment, time, and persistence. You can expect to give a lot before you receive much back. Sometimes, you may receive more than you could ever give back. You share the surplus when you have it, and you can ask for help when you’re in need.
Some of the confusion around the meaning of community comes from the fact that modern society has effectively eliminated true community from most parts of our lives. Something bothering you that someone said or did? You can avoid it, or them. You can lie and say it’s fine if it’s not, and it doesn’t really matter as long as your rent/mortgage is paid and your groceries stocked. You aren’t materially affected, because you aren’t concretely relying on each other in the first place.
After growing up in a village-less society, many of us try to bring back what we’ve lost: we try to “build community”. Whether that’s a bowling league, a community garden, church, or an off-grid commune, modern experiments with community fail more often than not. Let’s see what the Alliums have to say about that:
Community doesn’t have to take up a ton of space. Like the onions, it can thrive even in the smallest ways, quietly, behind the scenes. An example of that might be an AA or other type of support group, where members are helping and receiving help, being accountable to one another, and improving quality of life for the whole.
Community is hard to establish, and easy to disappear. Tend your community, especially a new one, like you would when planting baby onions.
Trials will come. Expect them, and make friends with the weeds. They are what shows you how strong your skills, teamwork, and communications really are. Embrace conflict as an opportunity for growth, and don’t let the weeds get too big.
Observe rituals regularly. For onions, that’s the annual process of planting, harvesting and curing. For most, ritual becomes important only on the holidays. However, rituals can happen monthly, weekly, or daily. Anything that involves cooking, eating, singing, dancing, crafting, or going for a walk. These are the things that our ancestors would have done together every day for hundreds of thousands of years. Find something you can do today helps keep connection flowing in your community, and make it a routine.
Be generous. Give what good you have to give freely, and consider it an investment in your community, just like compost is in the soil. Onions are edible all over, and at all growing stages. The more you give, the more you become a part of something bigger than you. That “biggness”, the strength of your community benefits yourself as well as those you love, those to come, and those you may not ever know.
Staying power is key. Not many foods can hold out all winter long like a cured onion or garlic bulb. Be like them, and don’t give up.
Growing onions at scale basically requires a group effort, and onions are the fruit of that collaboration. Thanks for joining me on this journey into the Alliums, and this writing series. Let me know what your favorite Alliums are, thoughts on growing them, or ideas about community.
Until next time, stay pungent!
Thank you, Farmer Rox! We love getting our biweekly shares from Winterspring, and appreciate your sharing about community and growing. Plus, it's wonderful to read about the journey that you and these plantings have taken with one another. ☺️
Team Allium forever! I learned SO MuCH about my favorite edible friends and the lessons they have to teach us about community. Thank you, Farmer Rox!