Green Onions - great in salad, and to treat boils
Green onions, Allium fistulosum, are called by many names,including scallions, Welsh onions and bunching onions. It’s a perennial bulb, a member of the Lily family, and very similar to the annual Spring onion (Allium cepa, also called Green onion). Japanese bunching onions are a cultivar of this species. I’ll call them Welsh onions from now on, so as not to mix them up with the annual ones.
Welsh onions are easy to grow, just sow quite shallowly in April to May, then thin or transplant to about 10-25cm (4-10 inches) apart. You can harvest individual stems from August onwards, but leave part of the clump to produce more bulbs. Once established, the plants will keep you supplied with onions for your salad or medicinal use for several years. They can be used as edging alongside other plants, where they will act as pest deterrents.
Even though they are not often thought of as medicinal plants, Welsh onions are in fact very active medicinally, and if it weren’t for their better known relatives, might be considered stars of the herbal remedy store. Consider the properties of this plant: it is both anti-fungal and anti-bacterial, and works as a diuretic and to expel parasites of the digestive system (or skin, but you might draw the line at smearing yourself with onion juice). It can be used to treat indigestion, chills to the stomach and colds, and finally the crushed bulbs make an excellent poultice to draw pus from boils, sores and abscesses.
To unlock the medicinal properties of this herb, you could make a standard infusion of the whole plant (except the roots), or just chop them up and add them to a salad or sandwich. Welsh onions are definitely top of the class for ease of use!
All the properties discussed here are important, but even more important is to grow them in a way that does not dilute that effectiveness with potentially toxic chemicals. For this reason, it’s essential to grow them organically. To find out more about growing green onions organically, visit the Gardenzone.
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