"Vegetables of Interest"

Size Matters

Size Matters

(Allium cepa)



In nearly every respect Medwyn Williams (aka "Medwyn of Anglesey") seems like a normal fellow.  He is a Welshman of an age somewhere North of fifty.  He is retired from a long career in government.   His smooth, youthful face expresses warmth and intelligence. In photographs he appears in a fine-looking suit draped over a generous frame.   Medwyn Williams writes a good deal and his texts read like they belong to the man in the photographs.  His material is handled with crisp clarity and helpfulness.  He shuns illustrations preferring the ruler as he offers tips and encouragement to his readers.  And doubtless he has a great number of readers in places high and low.  Medwyn Williams is into size.

The English gardener is many things.  He is hard working, frugal, observant, patient, and communicative to the point of being chatty. But he is also something else:  Competitive.  The English are rather keen on something they call "competitive gardening"  a hobby whose spirit is captured in the brief and inelegant phrase, "Mine is bigger than yours."  I don't mean to suggest that the English gardener's sizable interest in size is entirely a matter of ruler or scale. English vegetable competitions also emphasize an unblemished specimen of uniform and 'classic proportions'.   But it is clear from those who make into the winner's circle using specialized seeds and underground tips that this is gardening in the "Big League.'

Americans gardeners, too, reach for super-sized produce.  A careful reading of a Gurney's or Burpee's seed catalog will discover pulse-quickening descriptions that include words like "huge," "enormous" and "fist-sized."  But unlike English enthusiasts we haven't marshaled entire seed lines devoted to the exhibition market nor do we have the expertise to boast of a 15# Kelsae onion with a girth of 33 inches.

Until recently  I've held a smug and self-serving opinion about competitive gardening.  I would quote Swift's line in Gulliver's Travels that "….whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind…"  and note that it applied to "two ears or blades" rather than an a double-sized ear or blade.  But my 2007 crop of Walla Walla onions was so diminutive that I found myself delivering them in brown paper wrappers.  It was time to study Medwyn's  tips on growing onions.

Attached is a photo of my 2008 Walla Walla onion crop.  They are not 15 pounds nor do they have 33 inch waistlines.  They do, however, catch one's breath.  And my cipollini which share space on the onion drying table seem embarrassed.  Medwyn is the Man!

These onions were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon, Sonoma County.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Walla Walla Onions

Walla Walla Onions
(Allium cepa)

Walla Walla Onions are a Spanish-type sweet onion of Corsican origin.  A Frenchman, Pete Pieri, brought them to America in the late 1800s.  By legend he acquired the onion during a tour of duty in the French army.  After immigrating to the Walla Walla area of Washington State he introduced them to several farmers in the region who were of Italian descent. The large size and early yields of the new onion impressed the Italians who initially called it the “French Onion” in recognition of Pieri.  Later the onion was renamed as the ‘Walla Walla’ as it became the dominant cultivar grown in the region.

Since the 1950s the Walla Walla onion has gained wide popularity across the Pacific Northwest for gardeners and chefs.  It tolerates our mild winters and it produces large, succulent bulbs for a mid-summer harvest.  The flesh is “sweet”  (a technical misnomer since ‘sweet onions’ haven’t any more sugar that other onion types) and if grown in the right soils it can be eaten raw with relish.  (I make liberal use of hardwood ash from my brick oven as a soil amendment for onions.)  These characteristics make the Walla Walla a fine onion for Northern gardeners who have less success with shorter-day sweet varieties such as the Granex onion (aka ‘Vidalia/Maui Maui’).

Walla Walla onions do have one significant flaw.  They don’t keep very long.  Careful curing and storage will keep a Walla Walla for a few short months.  Store bought Walla Wallas have usually been refrigerated to extend their storage at the expense of their delicate flavor.

My crop of Walla Wallas is in good form despite repeated April frosts that pushed some other onion varieties into despair.  The harvest/curing of the 08 crop has begun.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

French Grey Shallots & the Summer Solstice

Near the time of the winter solstice last year I wrote about  timing of shallot planting and harvesting . Now as the summer solstice approaches  the shallot harvest looms.  I've dug a few hills over the spring as a monitoring exercise and I think the much of the harvest will be on time and ready in two weeks.  The aroma of a freshly dug Grey Shallot is unforgettable.  Its not onion-like nor sulfurous.  Think of a dirty truffle stored overnight in a burlap bag that was used to carry fresh ramps.  Its a one-of experience for serious foodies.

And another experience is the Alain Passard French Shallot soup with bacon cream. The recipe appears below and I encourage you to try it.  Its simplicity might encourage the adventurous chef to add their own bit of whimsy but I've found that the 'basic' Passard 'recette' along with a bountiful glass of Lafon Mersault is sufficient to make anything that follows drab in comparison.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Cream of Shallot Soup….Alain Passard

- 600 g (1 lb. 5 oz.) French Shallots
- 40 g (3 tbsp.) half-salted butter
- 1 1/2 garlic cloves, peeled
- 500 ml (2 cups) whole milk
- Juice of half a lemon
- Fleur de sel
Whipped cream
- 200 g (3/4 cup) heavy cream
- 150 g (5 oz.) smoked bacon, coarsely chopped
- Fleur de sel

Method

  1. Heat the cream and smoked bacon in a saucepan. Leave to infuse, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove the bacon and put the cream in a blender. Season and set aside in the refrigerator.
   2. Wash, peel and mince the shallots. In a skillet, brown them lightly in the half-salted butter. Add the garlic cloves and whole milk and cook for 15 minutes over low heat.
   3. Liquefy in a blender and strain; season with fleur de sel and lemon juice.
   4. Whip the cream as soon as you take it out of the refrigerator until it has the consistency of whipped cream.
   5. Serve the soup very hot. Top each bowl with a dollop of the whipped bacon cream.

White 1015Y Texas Sweet Onions ("Contessa")

White 1015Y Texas Sweet Onions   ("Contessa")
(Allium cepa)



Reading the history of Texas sweet onions is a bit like reading the Book of Genesis.  If you substitute "Dr. Henry Jones" for "God" and "1944" for "In the beginning" both stories proceed with a long list of "who begat who" that stretches longer than the average reader's interest or memory.  In the case of Genesis we can assume that that all the "begetting" was accomplished by the human-on-human pastime known as "whoopee."   The same however cannot be said for the creation of Texas sweet onions.  Herein lies a tale of an unusual quirk of onion biology and lots of smarts on the part of plant geneticists such as Dr. Henry Jones.

The "In the beginning" line for Texas sweet onions opens in the late 1800s when Texas farmers discovered that their climate and soils could grow Spanish short-day onions that tasted "sweet."  Sweet onions are usually not "sweet" in the conventional sense of having more sugar than other onions but they do have lower concentrations of pyruvic acid which gives an onion its pungent taste.  Thus a "sweet onion" tastes mild, less pungent.  Texas "sweet onions" were a hit nationwide and business was good.  But farmers grew impatient with the variable yields and sizes of onions from the same batch of seed.  They wanted bigger onions with more uniform growth.

From a plant geneticist's point of view the wish list for a better sweet onion was feasible.  Size, 'sweetness', color and maturation time are characteristics that are more or less under genetic control.   If  strains of sweet onions with one or more desirable characteristics could be crossed the resulting offspring might have more good things than either parent.    Moreover the first generation offspring of two genetically non-identical plants are are often more vigorous and productive in a general way, a phenomena called 'hybrid vigor.' But the problem was that no one knew how to make a hybrid onion.

The discovery of how to make a hybrid onion belongs to Dr. Henry Jones and his research group at the USDA.  It was a tour de force of observation, experimentation and hard work.  The technique is difficult to describe in a nontechnical manner but essentially Jones found a way to reverse the overwhelming odds that an onion flower will pollenate itself.  Onion flowers contain hundreds of both male and female organs.  The male organ makes pollen which falls only a few millimeters in order to fertilize the female organ on the same flower. In theory pollen from one onion could fertilize another onion but the home team advantage of co-located male and female organs is huge. 

Jones' method of creating hybrid onions pivoted on the observation that some rare onion plants make flowers but are nonetheless sterile.  They rely on an alternative method of propagation. Jones hypothesized that the mechanism of onion sterility might be hereditary and that it could be used to control the 'slam dunk' self-pollenation of the average onion.  He was right but it took many years to trial and error to bring the technique to a large scale.  His first and most famous hybrid onion was "Granex" released in 1952.   When Granex was planted in Georgia it was renamed "Videllia" and the rest is onion history.  Today there are many hybrid onions of varying types but all have been created using Jones' insights.

A recent addition to the hybrid sweet onion clan is the 1015Y onion.  It was developed in the 1980s by Dr. Leonard Pike from Texas A&M University.  Pike's group was looking for a way to make a tasty, large sweet onion that would resist a serious root infection caused by a fungus common in Texas soils.  After years of labor his group introduced the "1015Y" onion.  The "1015" appellation was the suggested planting date in south Texas (October, 15) and the "Y" reflected its yellow color.  Marketers have dropped its technical name in favor of "Texas Supersweets" but people inside the Texas onion beltway know better and still refer to it as 1015.

The onions at hand are a new white variety of 1015Y.  (Marketers are attempting to jump in early on this one and its being promoted as "Contessa".)  The genetic controls over onion color are fairly well known.  Five genes control the range of color in onions, giving them a palette of white, yellow, red and a rare purple or chartreuse to choose them.  Most commercial white strains have a gene called "I" which is a dominant genetic ace card that shuts off any other color gene the onion might have.  I'm betting that Contessa is an "II" genotype but I have been frustrated in my efforts to learn about Contessa's genetic wiring.   My inquiry to the Texas onion farmer who sold me my plants was returned with the comment that "It's the same as 1015Y only its white.  That's all we know."

So there you have it:  a new white Texas sweet onion called "Contessa" or maybe "1015W".  These plants started their life on a Texas ranch but were shipped and transplanted into my garden in Sonoma Valley of the Moon during a wet, cold February .  Its genetic roots go back to mild onion forebearers in Spain and the Canary Islands.  But its recent ancestry bear the traces of ingenious human tinkering because you and I like onions to taste a bit less like onions.  Onions begat onions and human ingenuity begat more ingenuity.  Originally there was yellow but now we have white.  And that's all I know.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Thoughts on Planting Shallots

Thoughts on Planting Grey Shallots
Christmas Day, 2007


“Plant Grey Shallots on the Winter Solstice. 
Harvest them on the Summer Solstice.”
        Anonymous

In early December I began preparations to plant French grey shallots (aka “Griselle Shallots”).  I’m not a particularly prompt person but I respect Nature when she has been so clear as to set a date.

Grey shallots are small, tear-shaped bulbs that are beloved in French cooking but nearly unknown here in America.  Many botanical texts place them in a unique stature as the only ‘true’ shallot. Our familiar store-bought shallots are a type of clumping onion that grew up from seed.  One needn’t be a botanist to tell the difference, however.  A grey shallot has a dark, rich and earthy aroma while a supermarket shallot tastes like an onion that has swallowed a cheap antacid.

Grey shallots have drawbacks.  They don’t store particularly well nor do they seem to tolerate living under refrigeration, which is a mainstay of modern day vegetable storage. Grey shallots begin to ‘slump’ four or five months post harvest.  By Thanksgiving a few shallots will have melted away leaving only a dry husk.  And unless chemically poisoned, a true shallot will begin to think of sprouting after a few months of dormancy.  As the Winter Solstice approaches on the 22nd of December an intact grey shallot is thinking hard about sprouting roots and shoots.

This delayed yet specific sense of timing in a shallot’s behavior has made its way into a farming maxims that counsel us to “plant and harvest shallots by the Solstice”.  You can find those maxims today when talking to the best Allium experts such as John Swenson or you can uncover them in John C. Loudin’s ‘An Encyclopedia of Gardening” in the 1800s.  Good advice stores well.

Since the earliest times farming has produced crops and maxims.  The crops fed the farmer’s family and the maxims gave the farmer much needed advice.  Given the importance of farming to the survival and stability of early human culture it isn’t surprising that farm advice featured prominently in our earliest literary works.  A light tillage of the first Western literary cannon uncovers lots of commentary on farming.  Mago, Cato, Varro and Pliny all had much to say about farming.  Their advice ranged from the general (“In buying a farm do not be too eager”  Cato) to the specific ( “Plant wheat (emmer) on October 15.”  Pliny ).  Taken as a whole their advice is entirely familiar to anyone who has farmed.  In any era, past or present, there has always been a neighbor who has the time to tell you what you’ve done wrong.

The ancients crafted their farming maxims from collective observation.   There was surprisingly little supernatural or mystical about to their discussions.  These were practical people who built trust by accurate observation and reporting.  Agricultural quackery was a 20th century invention that began with Rudoph Steiner.  Luckily no smart farmer takes Steiner seriously which brings to mind the Camus quote that you can make progress by being wrong if you learn to be wrong all alone. 

I began my shallot planting on Christmas Day, three days late of the Solstice.  I first uncovered a few hills of grey shallots that I had left in the shallot bed over the summer.  As you can see in the photograph they had dutifully sprouted and were ready for division and replanting.  By some mechanism a shallot keeps time with an accuracy that matches our invention of the Gregorian calendar.  How does a  bulb no larger than a nickel sense the shortest day of the year?

Evidence suggests that onions, a cousin to the shallot, manage dormancy by silencing genes responsible for sprout formation.  It’s a form of ‘genetic checkmate’ that the onion can maintain for a typical but not permanent length of time.  Numerous factors influence this checkmate status including time; temperature; daylight; and the bulb’s maturity when harvested.  The innermost details of the mechanism aren’t known but some evidence suggests that histones are involved.  Histones are a family of small proteins that are plentiful in the nuclear chromatin structure and they are important in the management of the genes themselves.  Histones can act as ‘switches’ that turn adjacent genes on or off.  In the case of onions it is thought that declining amounts of a histone called H2 might act as a switch to activate the sprouting process.  The search is on to discover why onion histone H2 changes with time and temperature but there are abundant clues in both plants and animals that histones can be tweaked by factors external to the cell’s internal environment.

Recent work with flowering plants has shown that cold temperatures can have a cumulative effect of changing the histones that surround the chromatin structure on cells that make up the bud structure. When enough exposure to cold has taken place the plant’s genes that inhibit flowering get turned ‘off.’  Any subsequent warming spell can trigger  a second temperature-sensitive pathway that leads to blossoming.    Anyone who has seen a cherry tree blooming in February can appreciate that irony.

I am confident that one day that we will know what manner of switch or clock that tells a grey shallot to sprout.  It will probably involve a great number of steps each with its own universe of variation. Fate may have it that whoever discovers the identities and the script for this biological play will win a prize, perhaps a Nobel.  If they do I can imagine them being questioned for a summary of their work that can be of practical use for the non-scientific community.  I trust that they will say “Plant Grey Shallots on the Winter Solstice.  Harvest them on the Summer Solstice.” 

Good advice stores well.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2007

Ciboule Onions

Ciboule Onions

(Alium    )

“Ciboule” is the common French name for a type of onion that is formally known as ‘Allium fistulosum.  Unfortunately “Ciboule” is often translated into English as “green onions” which is literally true but what we know here as green onions are not Ciboule or A. fistulosum.  In America green onions are immature bulbing onions most commonly White Lisbon or something close to that.   These are not Allium fistulosum but rather Allium cepa.

Allium fistulosum onions are non-bulbing perennial plants that propagate in clumps and have distinctive round fragile leaves.  There are several varieties but all are believed to have originated in Asia.  As perennial onions made their way outside of Asia some varieties were given exotic but incorrect names such as “Egyptian onions” or “Welsh onions.”  Neither name correctly suggests their origins but the names have none-the-less stuck.

“Ciboule”  or perennial onions occupy a unique niche in the garden by offering fresh onions for harvest year round.  In very cold climates they can be covered by straw and will generally green up with the first thaws of spring.  Here in California they are green year around but do most of their clumping during the winter and very early spring.

Ciboule onions are prized in France and Asia but they are not grown commercially in the United States.   A hundred years ago it was common to find a patch of perennial onions in an American home garden but today few gardeners are attracted to the joys of year-around weeding that they require.  A few named heirloom varieties continue to make the rounds amongst US collectors.  These include “Evergreen Hardy”, “Stevenson Multiplier,” “Welsh” and Franz Bunching.  It is unclear if these varieties are unique.  In Asia there are a number of stable varieties of fistulosum onions that qualify for heirloom status.  One of the best is “Red Beard.”

Ciboule onions are notable for their subtle onion flavor and the absence of the heat found in bulbed onions.  Although they are not technically “sweet” they do taste that way in a relative sense.  Some claim that Ciboule can become bitter if overcooked but I’ve not experienced that outcome. I do agree with many gardeners that Ciboule do taste differently depending upon the timing of the harvest.  Their freshest flavor is in late winter or spring.  But that is not to say that I’d pass up a Ciboule any other time of year.

Perhaps the most famous gastronomic story about Ciboule comes from The Passionate Epicure by Marcel Rouff.  His fictional gourmand Dodin-Bouffant was wild about Ciboule.  In the real world few things can compare with fresh Ciboule slow cooked in butter and served against a delicate white fish with herbs.

These Ciboule were grown organically in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.  The origin of my patch was from French stock.  I did the weeding and the cows made the manure.

C. Lindquist

Chives

Chives

(Allium schoenoprasum)

I wish there were more of a story about chives or at least a large family of different varieties with unusual histories.  (Garlic Chives are a different species.)  As it is chives are sweet, neat and attractive little plants that are all alike and very close to their wild counterparts.  It would seem that “chives are chives.”

I’m told that “schoenoprasum” is bastardized Greek that compounds “hollow” and “leek” into a single word.  That factoid might be correct but its not very interesting.

On a brighter note chive flowers are a thing of beauty even before they open.  I’ve read that the Japanese relish chive flowers that have been dipped in batter and deep fat fried.  I’ve not tasted a fried chive flower but if you’ve ever looked at one closely it seems like a cruel thing to do.

My chive plant is a cutting from my parents farm in Iowa.  Their chives were a cutting from my  aunt Elsa’s garden nearly 35 years ago.   Elsa was an avid gardener with a keen and practical interest in plants.  Like most Midwestern gardeners she favored plants that offered good yields and a likelihood of surviving the extremity of a Minnesota winter.  “It won’t die” was the highest order of praise in her garden.  That her chives now grow in my California garden proves her point.  Sadly “Elsa’s Chives” have outlived her but I think of her each time I tend the plants and I thank her each time I snip a pinch.

Really fresh chives are a wonderful and versatile herb.  While chives kept under refrigeration might continue to look fresh the flavor fades to a faint shadow after two or three days.  A careful chef should have access to a close-by garden with chives.  They are easy to grow and a much-loved gardener once told me that they won’t die.

C. Lindquist

Tropea Rossa Lunga

Tropea Rossa Lunga       
(Allium cepa)



       The red onions from Tropea in Southern Italy have been famous for centuries.   Think of the American Walla Walla onion or the Vidalia onion but now add 450 years.  Over time Tropea onions have become ingrained into local lore and cuisine.  There is a large onion festival each July in Tropea to celebrate the "remarkable health and
healing powers" of red onions.  I've seen pictures and they look like a healthy crowd.

The alleged healing powers of Tropea onions cover arthritis, poor eyesight, skin disorders and a potpourri of infections including toenail fungus.  For the healthier onion eater it is claimed to keep women slim and men erect. In recent years a "Dr. Pasquale Potenza" surfaced in advertising for Tropea onions.  The fictional biochemist claimed to have discovered the active ingredient in Viagra to be present in Tropea onions.   Those Italian farmers are such jokers. "Potenza?  Merck is laughing all the way to the bank.

The famed Tropea onions are of two open pollinated varieties:  the bottle-shaped or torpedo type "Tropea Rossa Lunga" featured here and a round onion with a flattened top called "Tropeana Tonda".  This year I'm trialing a small patch of Tropea Tonda as well but they appear to be 3-4 weeks behind other onions.  Both types are red/violet with sweet, crisp flesh.     The Lunga onions are principally eaten fresh or "cipolla fresca" although they will keep for a few short months.

Tropea lunga are a versatile onion in the kitchen but many claim it reaches its acme when lightly oiled and roasted over a low fire.  The inner white flesh becomes meltingly sweet and the charred exterior has a pleasant, smoky flavor.  In that vein I've roasted Lunga in a wood-fired oven and blended minced inner onion flesh with mashed
French Fingerling potatoes.  Serve the dish with a drizzle of coulis made from the charred onion skins, butter and sea salt.  Fantastico!

The EU has granted the onions of Tropea "IGP Status" which essentially means that only Tropea Onions grown in Tropea can be named as such. These onions were grown from seed purchased from the Italian seed company Franchi Semette. The soil was American.  The fertilizer was from American horses in Sonoma County. The water was American and the labor was 100% American.  If the Europeans want me to call these
onions something else they gotta make me.  I'm ready for them.  As W might say:  "Bring it on!"

C Lindquist

The Great Calçot Experiment

The Great Calçot Experiment

Allium cepa



Gardening is a great way to sharpen your skills of observation, deduction and experimentation.  No less than Charles Darwin started his day with a slow tour of his garden in Kent via a path called Sand-Walk.   His route often paused at his pea patch where he conducted his own studies of pea genetics that often ended with peas on the dinner plate.  Darwin nicknamed Sand-Walk his "Thinking Path."

I am hardly anyone's Darwin but I have been drawn into some experiments of my own with onions.  They began last fall when I encountered an interesting story about a type of onion called "calçot" (pronounced "cal-so") that is grown in Spain's Catalan region.  The word calçot is Catalan and is generally translated as "sock" but I've also seen it meant as "cover."

Calçots are type of "spring onion" that has been grown for centuries in Catalan.  With improbable precision the history of their cultivation is traced to a single farmer, Xat de Benaiges, who in the late 1800s decided to plant sprouting onion bulbs back into the soil and manage them in an unusual way.

By nature onions are biannual plants.  In other words they require two seasons (years) to make a full revolution of their life cycle of seed-to-seed production.  If one sows onion seeds in the spring the resulting plant will grow or "set" a bulb when the hours of daylight matches a genetically set requirement for that strain of onion.  The bulb grows in size until the plant's life cycles runs its course and dies. We harvest onion bulbs and promptly consume them but an uneaten onion bulb's destiny is to finish its life cycle next season.

After a period of dormancy onion bulbs will, if not poisoned with chemical inhibitors, sprout anew.  Typically they send up several shoots each with independent root systems reflecting the fact that bulbs are made up of several "rings" which are specialized leaves each with a germinal center.  These new plants won't set bulbs but they will soon flower and set seeds for future planting.

The innovation that the Catalan farmer discovered 200 years ago was a simple technique of farming sprouted onion bulbs in a manner that elongated their white shoots.  The next step was to harvest them very early before flowering and at a point when the onions remain tender and full of sweet flavor.

The farming practice of growing calçots co-evolved with culinary practices and social customs of the region.  Calçot are harvested late February through early April.  They are prepared in a rustic manner by grilling them over dried grape vines.  The fire leaves the outer skins blackened and they finish cooking by wrapping them in paper for a brief rest.  The finishing touches in eating calçots are to strip off the outer charred leaves (taking off the 'sock') to reveal the sweet white inner stalk.  Calçot are typically eaten with a dipping sauce made from garlic, tomatoes and ground almonds.  Of course this sort of food calls for medicinal quantities of red wine, which prompts an appetite for another round of calçots.

The accompanying photographs document my Grand Calcot Experiment.  I started with a special sweet white onion that I had grown in 2006.  I stored them in my usual careful way, which is in a box under a walnut tree.  As fall drew to a close many of the uneaten bulbs had sprouted.  I planted the bulbs in "calcot fashion" in a trench, adding more soil as the sprouts lengthened.  In short I "hilled" them as one does with potatoes.

The pictures show how the calçots shot up multiple shoots, each forming a large stout stalk at harvest.  The final photos show the grilling with grape vines and the "de-socked" onion.  Calcots taste sweet with a mild, very fresh onion flavor.  On a scale of 1-10 I would modestly place them at 15 and give them an Onion Oscar.  They are quite nice indeed.

Despite the raves at the table and tricky farming though I rank the Great Calçot Experiment as a mixed success.  Darwin looked at his peas and ate them but then went on to write a few books that changed the world.  I looked at my calçots crop and ate them too but I'm writing this bog.  Need I say more?

Maybe I'll try peas next. 

C Lindquist

"Bastard Onions"

"Bastard Onions"
(Alium cepa)



There are a great number of onion varieties in Italy.  A few such as
the Tropea lunga and tonda have a national fame but in much of the
country farmers raising varieties with a local histories are
commonplace.

One Italian town with a particularly historic link to a local onion is
Certaldo.  The 14th century writer and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio
lived in Certaldo for a portion of his life and used the town as a set
piece for one story found in The Decameron.  The principal of the
story was a monk named "Friar Cippola" or Father Onion.  Today onions
of a different type continue to play a role in the town's fame and
cooking.

Certaldo is known for its purple onions which figure in several famous
local dishes.  One variety of  these onions is called "Statina" which
is a small, round onion harvested in the summer months.  It has been
named to Slow Foods Ark of Taste.   A second variety of purple onion,
Vernina, is harvested in the fall.  The term "Vernina" is vague and
simply means "Fall Onion", a common descriptor of late season onions
in Italy.  Bastardo onions appear to be a selection of Vernina onions
from that region.  How "bastard" got attached to the name is anyone's
guess but it may be a vivid reminder that they have been removed from
their ancestral home in Certaldo.

These onions were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

Seed Source:

C Lindquist