POTATO ONIONS, TOP ONIONS, AND SHALLOTS. 27 



these varieties are sported by the common onion. In a 

 large field of seed-onions, occasionally small onions will be 

 found, growing in place of seed ; and these onions, when 

 set out the ensuing spring, will vegetate and develop 

 readily, but they will not always in turn yield the like ; i.e.. 

 Top onions. 



Potato onions, or multiplying onions as they are some- 

 times called, are a thick, hard-fleshed variety, very mild and 

 pleasant to the taste, and tender if eaten soon after gathering, 

 but they grow to be tough as the season advances. They 

 are poor keepers, unless spread very thinly in some dry 

 apartment. They are propagated 

 by planting the bulbs in drills, four- 

 teen inches apart, the largest ones 

 six, the smaller four, inches apart 

 in the row, and the smallest ones 

 two inches. The small ones rapidly 

 increase, and make onions from 

 two to three inches in diameter ; while the larger ones 

 divide, and make from four to a dozen or even sixteen 

 (usually from five to eight) small, irregularly shaped onions. 

 It will be seen that the larger bulbs answer the same purpose 

 as the seed in the common onion ; hence to have onions for 

 sale, and yet maintain the stock, it is necessary that both 

 sizes should be planted. 



The Potato onion should be indulged for its best develop- 

 ment in a soil rather moister than the varieties from seed. 

 The advantage of the Potato onion is its earliness, and the 

 fact that it is not as liable to injury from the onion-maggot, 

 when that abounds, as the common sort. I have seen an 

 instance where, on half an acre of each growing side by side, 

 the common onion (that raised from seed) was almost wholly 

 destroyed, while the Potato onion was nearly uninjured. 



