- Alliums add incredible
flavor to the kitchen and also incredible variety
and versatility in the garden, but here at Epic Gardening, we actually have had some problems growing alliums in the past. I'm talking garlic, leeks, and onions. So in this video, I'm gonna
share with you some tips on all three of those crops so you can have bountiful harvests. Let's start out first with tips that apply to all the alliums we'll
talk about in this video. And the first is gonna be a watering tip. If I was to pull up any of these leeks that you see sitting before me right now, which I won't, because
they're not ready yet, you would see that the root
system is very shallow. I'm talking if here's
the bottom of the leek, it's probably no more
than about a couple inches below the soil. What that means for watering, is that the water that you
deploy through the garden, really has to be right
next to the plant itself. So there's a couple ways to do that. One way to do that, and
probably the most efficient way, is to have drip tape or drip line running along down the line. What's nice about that
is drip tape has emitters at certain spacing, and
you can just put a leek, or an onion, or a garlic
right next to that emitter, and you have perfect, perfect watering. Of course, if you don't wanna set that up, it's also very easy to just hand water and make sure you're getting it at the base of that plant. While not absolutely mandatory, you can apply mulch around
the base of your leek plants, or your onions or your garlic, to help lock in a little
bit of that moisture. So I'm just putting about an inch or so on top of this garden straw here, right around this leek to show
you how you would do that. You can over-water. It's going to show up typically as yellowing tips of the leaves. Now, that's a different problem if you see that closer to harvest. That's gonna indicate something different, but if you see that too early, like if I was to see
yellowing tips right now while these plants are still forming, I would know that it's a
potential that I over-watered. And that brings us to a tip that again, applies to all these alliums here, and it's gonna be fertilizing. I would say generally speaking, they're not gonna need a ton of it, although you can do it if you want to. So if you're going to, what
I would say first of all, is just bed prep. Just make sure you have good
amount of organic matter and all purpose, granular
organic fertilizer mixed in, while you actually plant out. But if you do wanna amend in you can put something with
high phosphorus early on, for root bulb development, but then you're really gonna want to have consistent nitrogen up until harvest, because, really, what we're growing here, these are all just leaves. This is garlic leaf. So the garlic- each leaf is going to add another wrapper layer
around the garlic bulbs. You get a bit more of an actual structure to the bulb itself. And then with leeks and onions back here, it's just another layer to
the onion or to the leek, which means you get a more sizable bulb, or a more sizable chunk
of leek to harvest. Finally, on the topic
of companion planting, certainly you can
companion plant any allium with any allium, but you can
also plant it with things like tomatoes or lettuce, you can do summer savory. There's certain herbs
that work really well. I think the only real thing to avoid here, is anything that's gonna
compete for water and nutrients as a shallow rooted plant
right next to these alliums, which are also shallow-rooted plants that want those nutrients. So you may wanna avoid something like anything in the legume family. So a pea or a bean, it's
also shallow rooted. At least at the start, it's going to be competing
for a lot of resources, although those are nitrogen fixers. So they might end up at
the end of their lives, deploying nitrogen back to the soil through those root nodules. But while it's growing,
doesn't really matter. It's still competing. So I might avoid those two, but mix it up. Just don't plant something
that's gonna compete directly next to your alliums. Let's get into some specific
tips, starting out with leeks, which really are one of my
favorite alliums to grow. I love potato leek soup. You all know I absolutely love
growing and eating potatoes, so much so that I more or
less survived off of them in 2019 during that
apocalypse grow experiment, but leeks, great crop of leeks this year. And here are some things to know. The easiest way to plant leeks, is going to be to drag a trench out and just drop the leeks in pretty deep. You don't have to match
the roots right next to the top of the soil. You can actually drop them in deep. And that helps out quite a bit, because typically when
you're growing a leek, what you're trying to get
is a long white portion of that plant that you
can then chop up and use. And that only happens by blocking light from that portion. It's called blanching. Actually does have really nothing to do with the cooking process of blanching. What you're doing is, you are putting something
around that plant to basically stop photosynthesis. So the easiest way to do that of course, is to just bury it deeper
in the first place. If you haven't done that, though, what you can do is mound
soil around the leek. You can maybe mound mulch around the leek. It could be kind of annoying to do that, but you can also take something
like a cardboard roll, let's say you're only growing a few, and this is something that you want to do, you can just take a cardboard roll and wrap it around the leek. And it blocks the sun, so you actually get that
nice white leek bottom part that you're looking for. The final thing with leeks,
is just the type of leek. There's really just short
day or short season leeks, 50 to 100 days or so. They're smaller, they're quicker. Might be good for a colder zone. And then there's leeks that
can take 180 plus days, almost as long as a
beautiful head of garlic. So pick your variety careful with leeks, make sure you map it to your season. I'm kneeling before you here
at my personal altar of garlic. I have over 200 heads planted over 20 to 25 different varieties, both soft and hard neck, which brings us to our
first tip with garlic is, really selecting the right variety. I have figured out a way in my climate, in this warm climate of zone
10b in San Diego, California, to grow hard neck, but a general rule of thumb
is the colder the climate, so the lower your growing zone, the more you can grow a hard neck variety. The warmer your growing zone, the more you want to trend
towards a soft neck variety, like something like California Early, obviously applinged named. But with garlic, especially hard neck, you need to get it in the ground, and let it get a cold
season under it's belt. So plant it in November,
four to six inches deep, add mulch on top. If you're in a cold zone that's long enough for the
roots to start to develop, but it's accumulating a
bunch of cold temperature across that winter. And then when spring comes, you start to see it shoot up like this. The modification that I did, is I actually kept my hard
neck garlic in the fridge for a couple months, and then
I planted it out in November. 'Cause I knew I wasn't gonna get as cold as some of you watching this video. So that's one tip with garlic. Another tip that you see all the time, but I'm actually unsure of
how well it works or not, I've definitely tried it, I've definitely not tried it, I haven't seen of a difference either way, is soaking the garlic bulb
before you plant it out. A lot of the times people will say, "Make a mixture of fish
fertilizer, and water, and soak it in there for a couple minutes, or a couple hours,
whatever the case may be, and then drop it in." Honestly guys, I don't
really think it makes that much of a difference, personally. I'm certainly open to
being corrected there, but as you can see, we didn't
soak any of this garlic. It's been in the ground
for about four months now, and it's looking absolutely incredible. Now we come to onions, the most basic of the
allium crops to grow, but actually weirdly for us, sometimes the most complicated. There's a lot to know
when it comes to onions. The first one is this weird little tip we're gonna try out involving a spoon. Why would I be using a
spoon to spoon my onions? Doesn't make any sense, right? Well, it actually might not, but we're gonna test it out this season and we'll report back. The idea is this. If you just sort of move away right around the base where
that bulb starts to form, the theory at least, is that it has less
material to push against. So the bulb development
should be less impeded. Thus, you should get a bigger bulk. I really don't know how much
weight there is to this. Certainly, you don't need
to use a spoon for this, you could just use your hands. But I'll definitely report
back and see if this works. The tip that will help
you the absolute most when it comes to onions, is simply the decision you make when you first start to plant them out. And you really have two decisions to make. One is the variety. And these are really grouped into three different categories: short, intermediate or day
neutral, and long day onions. Pick where you live. Let's say I'm here in
San Diego, California. I'm in the Southern part of the state, Southern part of the country, then I should be growing short day onions, because my days in summer, as in hours of sunlight
accumulated during those days, is not very long. They're short, it's a about
11 and a half hours or so. If I was living in central United States, then I would have a little
bit longer of a day, maybe a 14-hour a day. And then if I'm living in the North, I have 16 plus sometimes. Think about someone living in Alaska, very long summer days there. So you need to pick an onion variety that matches your location. That's really the
simplest way to put that. The next choice you have, is how you decide to plant your onions. And there's a couple different options. You can certainly go from seed. So if you do, remember just
pick the right variety. And you can go from set. Now, if you go from set, you're probably going
to a nursery to get it. And it's probably gonna be
the variety that you need. Some of these were planted from set. Some of these were planted from seed. Sets are basically just
tiny little onion bulbs that were grown in ground for a year, harvested before they were able to actually put up that flower
stock or really develop. And then you plant them out. And the idea is, they'll
bulb up this year even more, instead of going to a flower. So sets are easier, because you're not starting
something from seed, but also sets tend to
produce smaller bulbs. And sometimes they can still flower in what's really their second year, but your first year growing that set, if that makes any sense. So in my opinion, it's
probably better to grow onions either from seed, or just buy seedlings that are first to your
seedlings, not sets, and then just separate those
out and plant those out. Growing alliums is one of
the most rewarding things you can do in the garden. As you can see, we've
gone pretty overboard here at Epic Gardening, but that's what we do. It's Epic Gardening. So leeks, onions, garlic, if
you have any more questions, drop 'em in the comments. More to come, good luck in the garden, and keep on growing.
