I don’t normally grow onions. I grew them once and the results weren’t bad, but I just don’t seem to use a lot of onions and they’re usually not expensive, and I wanted the space for other things, so….
Recently, some of the members at the Ozgrow garden forum were talking about potato onions and someone gave this link to a place in Tassie (where all good things seem to come from). So I took a look.
Yelwek Farm. It looks like a nice place. Nice people. A family-run business and organic to boot. Couldn’t be better. Not only do they sell potato onions, but garlic and oca as well. Different coloured oca. Salmon, Rainbow and Cream. Wouldn’t they all look nice in a salad? I’ve grown oca, but only the pink colour.
Potato onions are grown like shallots. You plant a bulb and it makes new daughter bulbs around it. You keep some back for replanting and eat the rest. I’ve grown shallots and they’re easy.
So I ordered some potato onions, some white and some brown. There must have been a problem with how I ordered because it seemed when I got a confirmation email that I was going to get two lots of white onions instead of one white and one brown. I wasn’t fussed. Then an email came saying there’d been a PayPal mix-up and could I confirm my order. I did that and mentioned that I’d wanted one lot of each colour instead of two lots of white. That had apparently been my mistake. Clicked the wrong link I suppose.
As an apology for the inconvenience (it wasn’t) of the PayPal mix-up they offered to send a complimentary pack of brown onions if I paid the postage. In the meantime I’d seen how stupid I was not to order garlic as well so said I’d make a new order (the initial one had already been sent) for garlic, which I did. I ordered 3 bulbs of garlic and received enough complimentary brown onions to make the package weight up to the postage rate. Like I said, nice people.
Two visits to the Post Office later, here is my box of goodies:
Go and have a look at Yelwek Farm and order from these nice people. Family-run businesses who care about what they do deserve our encouragement.
Foodnstuff 
February 27, 2013 at 7:31 pm |
That looks like a nice start to Autumn sowing. I will check out the farm as its always good to deal with pleasant ethic companies – thanks for letting us know about them.
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February 27, 2013 at 8:11 pm |
Ditto Liz, I will be checking them out as well. My friend grew potato onions recently and didn’t save any for planting again (sigh) so they are next on my check list. Onions are very cheap here in Tassie as we grow them so I don’t grow them myself but garlic is always something to grow because the flavour of shop bought garlic doesn’t even begin to compare with home grown :).
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February 28, 2013 at 12:23 am |
Never heard of potato onions. Definitely worth looking into. thanks a lot.
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February 28, 2013 at 6:08 am |
Those potato onions look like a sensible crop for me to grow. Useful, not too much maintenance and productive. I’m so time poor at the moment that it’d be good for my poor garden beds to grow SOMETHING!!!!
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