Leaves from Lantern Lane

THE ONION-GROWER

THE ONION-GROWERFor years I have cherished a secret ambition, buried deeply in my heart, and only thought of in my wildest moments of imagination. It seemed so far away and unlikely of fulfilment.

But today, March 1, I have made a start. I am 18 rows nearer to my goal than I was this morning and having definitely embarked on this career, I feel free to speak of it.

I would grow onions! Acres of onions!

My heart has always inclined toward onions since the days back in Manitoba, when I had to weed the garden before I went to school, and the onion rows gave some return for my labors. Young carrots, beets, turnips, while great in promise, made no immediate contribution, but a dozen young onions, when washed in the creek and wrapped in a bit of the Brandon Times, and put in the dinner pail, helped to season the noon-hour.

You are perhaps wondering about their effect socially, remembering the old saying about "an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but an onion a day will keep everyone away." Was there any danger of onion ostracism? Not at all. At Northfield school we all ate onions when we had them, most of us from choice, and the others in self-defence.

In addition to the part they played in my diet, I liked onions for their own sake. They were such a sure crop, and having hidden fires in their own stout hearts, they did not fear the early frosts like some other garden plants. And I liked their perky little top-knots, and the whole circle of their growth. And who has not made onion curls from the long green stocks?

And then their place in cooking and the incense they add to so many dishes! Try to make a meat pie, or a stew, or fry hamburger without an onion, or make potato, or celery, or tomato soup, and see how it is missed!

Onions are really one of the ameliorations of life, like tea and coffee. They make flat food savoury, and all foods better. They are the cook's best friends.

And they are good to look at—the big ivory Spanish onions, so firm and solid and accurately grained like a section of hardwood that has taken a century to grow; and the green onions with their pearly white tips. The aesthetic value of an onion has not been appreciated at its full value.

But onions are climbing the social ladder. They are advancing like liver, which used to be thrown in by the butcher "for your cat," and now sells for as much as beefsteak; or like the humble prune that once came in barrels, but now is wrapped in cellophane and served with whipped cream.

Onions are getting on! I heard a conversation not long ago between two women at a lecture, and while we waited for the great man to appear, one told the other of being at a bride's reception, and "there was just a trace of onion in the sandwiches." The other one expressed surprise, but she was put in her place when the lady who had the floor informed her that "the very nicest people are using onions now, in sandwiches and salads."

And wasn't that good news to me!

I have grown onions in short rows in crabbed city lots for years—nice onions, too—gone, alas, too soon. But today I planted my onion seed on a sunny slope in Gordon Head, in sight of the sea and within sound of the skylarks. And the seed I put in is the Ailsa Craig, hand-picked and vouched for. Having dug out the twitch grass from that piece of soil, I felt it had to have the best seed on the market.

I went to the Department to find out what could be done about twitch grass, and I found it cannot be removed by observation, or science, or chemistry, or machinery, unless you call your own two hands, grasping a spade, a bit of machinery. It has to be dug out, in shovelfuls of earth, and then the earth broken by hand, and the twitch grass removed. And that process has to go on and on.

At the Department I got a book on "Weeds and Their Control," and I read in it that twitch grass is the most pernicious of farm weeds, and came to us from Europe; and it is also called couch grass, quack grass and scutch grass; and it even has a Latin name, "Agropyron repens."

In the books on "Weeds", twitch grass has a full page illustration and an accurate description of its leaves, spikes, character, disposition, mode of growth and diabolical persistence. After routing out twitch grass for two afternoons to get ready for my onion planting, I can add no word to the description except that the pink stems can easily be mistaken for earthworms, but you soon know the difference. Earthworms curl engagingly around your fingers.

Of all the names given in the text, I like twitch grass the best. I can see it is the grass to which you must give your best efforts, and it provides the farmer and his family endless activity. But I hear it can be turned to a good use, too. Put in a box or in a hole in the ground, and sprinkled with sulphate of ammonia, it can be turned into a fertilizer.

That surely is putting one over on the twitch grass! One of the boys who was digging out twitch grass for us said he had seen a spear of it grow through a potato!

But to return to my onions. There they lie—the seeds I mean—under an inch of soil in rows fourteen inches apart, according to directions on the envelope, and when the rain falls now it will have a new meaning for me, for it will start the little hard seeds to germinate. And soon the little green threads will pierce the sod, and then no longer on government papers, or other places, will I need to give my occupation as "housewife," that pallid name which no woman likes to own. I will boldly inscribe in that column this good strong word—"Onion-Grower!"