AMERICAN KITCHEN GARDENER 
n 
ONION. 
Allium cepa .— Oignon , Fr.— Zwbiel , Ger. 
The common bulbous onion is a biennial plant, supposed to be a native oi 
Asia. There are many varieties of this plant. Those mentioned in Mr. 
Russell’s Catalogue are the following :— 
Large red, 
Potato onion. 
Top or tree onion, 
Silver-skinned, 
Strasburgh, 
White Portugal, 
Yellow. 
Genuine Madeira, 
The Strasburg is most generally adopted for principal crops. The silvei 
skinned is reckoned among the best for pickling. “ The top or tree onion 
has the remarkable property of producing the onions at the top of the stalk, 
and is valuable for domestic use, particularly for pickling, 1 in which they are 
excellent, and superior in flavor to the common kinds. It is also used for 
any other purpose that onions usually are. It is perennial, and propagated 
by planting the bulbs in spring or autumn, either the roots, bulbs, or those 
on the top of the stalks. 5 Russel fs Catalogue. 
Soil and culture .—The onion, u to attain a good size, requires rich, mellow 
ground, on a dry sub-soil. If the soil be poor or exhausted, recruit it with a 
compost of fresh loam and well-consumed dung, avoiding to use stable-dung 
in a rank, unreduced state. Turn in the manure to a moderate depth ; and, 
in digging the ground, let it be broken fine. Grow pickles in poor, light 
ground, to keep them small. The market-gardeners at Hexham sow their 
onion-seed on the same ground for twenty or more years in succession, but 
annually manure the soil. After digging and leveling the ground, the ma¬ 
nure, in a very rotten state, is spread upon it, the onion-seed sown upon the 
manure, and covered with earth from the alleys, and the crops are abundant, 
and excellent in quality. 55 — Hort. Trans, i, 121. 
Deane’s New England Farmer says, u A spot of ground should be chosen 
for them, w;hich is moist and sandy ; because they require much heat and a 
considerable degree of moisture. A low situation, where the sand has been 
washed down from a neighboring hill, is very proper for them. And if it 
be the wash of a sandy road, so much the better. The most suitable ma¬ 
nures are old, rotten cow and horse dung mixed, ashes, but especially soot. 
A small quantity of ashes or sand, or both, should be spread over them after 
sowing, especially if the soil be not sandy. And it is not amiss to roll the 
ground after sowing ; or harden the surface with the back of a shovel. 55 
Mr. Armstrong says, u It is propagated either by the seed or by tit- bulbs 
In the first case, you sow in shallow drills, twelve or fourteen inches apart 
