HOME VEGETABLE GARDENING 
ONIONS 
O NIONS as food for mankind can trace their useful- 
ness back to the dawn of civilization. History re- 
cords that laborers fed on bread and onions erected the 
Pyramids for the Pharaohs 4200 B. C. To this day 
onions are an important article of diet. They are used 
largely for soups and stews, and the foreign element of 
our great cities is more quickly incited to riots by pro- 
hibitive prices for onions than by the absence of potatoes. 
Onions are very democratic. The seeds sprout read- 
ily, the plants thrive most anywhere in this country 
in any soil, and form big onions in from 120 to 160 days 
from date seeds are sown if you follow the directions 
given on pages 103-114. There are sorts of many colors, 
for all purposes. The white kinds are the earliest and 
mildest, the yellow sorts are generally the heaviest crop- 
pers, and the red ones, of late maturity, are the best keep- 
ing kinds. The onion “sets” offered by seedsmen are 
really small onions, intended to produce green “scallions” 
early the following spring. 
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