India Langley, from The Community Farm, Chew Magna, takes a fresh look at onions – that staple ingredient that’s often overlooked.
“We grow salad onions, leeks and shallots at The Farm. These crops belong to the allium family. We plant our alliums into beds that are covered with an organic corn starch film. The film looks like black plastic, but naturally breaks down into the soil in six to nine months. It keeps most of the weeds at bay and helps retain moisture in the soil, ensuring our plants stay happy and healthy.
Our leeks are sponsored by organic food supplier Better Food as part of our Adopt-a-Crop scheme. They’re planted, weeded and harvested by hand. This is intensive, but many hands make light work and we’re given plenty of help from our superb volunteers.
Shallots are a labour of love. They’re one of the first seeds we sow each year. In January we raised 10,000 from seed which were ready to be planted outside in May and harvested in August. But the care and attention doesn’t stop there. Once harvested, they need to be slowly dried outside for six to eight weeks. Dried shallots last much longer than fresh (keeping for months, as opposed to weeks).
They’re traditionally sun dried on the field, but because we had such a soggy summer, we moved ours into the warmth of one of our polytunnels. And they’re ready for our veg boxes right about now.”
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