CHAPTER XL 
THE ONION AND ITS ALLIES. 
“ Most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet 
breath.” 
Midsummer Night’s Dream , IV., 2. 
S HE Onion ( Allium cepa) is too generally valued to need 
explanation of its uses or eulogy of its merits. It is 
not generally understood that the year of the onion 
begins in July, although it is everywhere known that the 
year of the spring bulb ends in August. The established 
rule for onion growing is to sow in March, and take up the 
crop when ripe ; and the time of ripening so much depends 
upon the season, that the storing of onions begins in some 
years in the middle of July, and in others is deferred until 
far into September, or even October. What we have to say 
on this part of the subject may be new to many of our 
readers, but is not, in the proper sense of the term, new at 
all. We intend to insist on the policy of sowing in summer, 
and that is why we lead off with the remark that “the year 
of the onion begins in July, or at latest in August.” 
The onion is a profitable plant, in every sense of the word, 
and therefore should be generously dealt with. Many of us 
might endure, without any excruciating pang, the loss of a 
crop of asparagus, delicious as it is ; or of carrots or parsnips, 
undeniably useful ; but to lose the onion crop would be a 
heavy blow, and it would be especially felt, for our sakes, by 
the sweet salads on sunny spring days, and on hot summer 
nights, and by the ducklings that had been fattened near the 
herb garden, and had known the smell of sage from their 
earliest days upwards. The three graces of the kitchen 
garden are the potato, the cabbage, and the onion ; and they 
are also qualified to play the parts of the three strong men, 
for which performance the potato should be regarded as 
Atlas, the cabbage as Hercules, and the onion as Milo of 
Crotona. 
