How Do You Grow Allium Aka Blooming Onion?
Garden centers are filled with colorful boxes and packages of bulbs promising flowers for spring. Tulips, Daffodils, Crocus are favorite standbys but Alliums are my new obsession. Alliums are also called blooming onion or flowering onion because they are indeed in the onion genus. Its family members include the common cooking onion, garlic, shallots and chives. Plant breeders began with those relatives and increased the blooms size allowing some bulbs such as “Globemaster” to grow ten inches across. In contrast “Drumstick’s” globe is only one and half inch in diameter. Flowering onion bloom in white, yellow, reddish purple and shades of blue and purple. Alliums add architectural structure and height in the late spring and early summer border. In the photo, we planted Allium “Globemaster” by a red single “Buckeye Bell” peony. What a wonderful contrast of color and texture. Plant Allium in a well drained site that receives four to six hours of sunlight daily. The bulb should be planted a
