Growing Wild Garlic Or Bear Onion

Ramson, bear onion, or wild garlic (Allium ursinum) in your garden

For the first time I met this plant in my institute years during business trips to the North Caucasus. In the city of Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz), the attraction at the local market was pickled wild garlic, closed in half-liter jars. Local residents collected it in the mountains and made such a blank. I really liked the pickled wild garlic. And I definitely brought her home to Leningrad.

The first sample of cherries was carried out at work, where I took a can of this delicacy, at lunchtime. Our lunch was decorated with this dish, as the excellent taste of the vitamin plant did not leave my colleagues indifferent. But after lunch, we realized that it was better for us to sit quietly at our tables, as far as possible not to talk to anyone and, moreover, not to visit the management. The reason for this, as you might guess, lay in the smell, because wild garlic is a garlic onion. It, like garlic, is a pleasure, but then such an aroma appears …

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Wild garlic has a characteristic garlic smell associated with the presence of essential oil in the leaves and bulbs. And the leaves of this plant also contain a lot of vitamin C. There are two types of wild garlic - European, also called bear onion, and victorious, found in the Caucasus, Siberia and the Far East. The European onion has no rhizome, forms only one bulb of an elongated-cylindrical shape with a diameter of 1 cm and a length of 5 cm. Its stem is triangular in height from 15 to 40 cm. At its base there are two large leaves on long petioles. This onion blooms in late May - early June with a white hemispherical umbrella, consisting of numerous flowers.

The victorious onion grows as a dense bush with a rhizome with several bulbs, plant height up to 70 cm.The lower leaves of this onion are scaly, medium-sized green, large up to 6 cm wide.The plates are located directly on the stem, and the flowers are collected in spherical whitish-green umbrellas colors. In late spring, when the leaves are tender and fragrant, they are harvested. At this time, there are still few other greens, and therefore wild garlic is especially valuable for salads, and for any meat, and you can simply eat it with bread and salt.

It is better to cut it not entirely, but selectively, which allows not to deplete all the bulbs at once and give a bountiful harvest. All parts of the plant are used for food: bulb, leaves, young shoots and flower arrows. The bulb can be planted in the fall or used as regular garlic in the winter. The pungent smell of wild garlic can be destroyed by pouring boiling water over it; it also disappears when dried. Ramson is an unpretentious plant that prefers shady and semi-shady areas, and in sunny places its leaves become smaller. The soil should not be acidic, but rich in organic matter, like garlic. When preparing a site for wild garlic, it is necessary to add humus, wood ash and mineral fertilizers. In severe drought, plants need watering.

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Ramson is a long-liver; it grows in one place for many years. If reproduction is necessary, it is advisable to use the vegetative method - with bulbs in early spring or autumn, which is even better. The bulbs are planted at the same depth at which they grew before, or a little deeper. Distance - 15x15 cm or 15x20 cm.

Care consists of weeding, watering, loosening the soil and 2-3 additional dressings over the summer. Sowing wild garlic with seeds is also possible, but, as in the case of onions, it turns out to be quite laborious work. Ramson responds well to proper care, in which 2-3 kg of greenery can be collected from one square meter of the garden over the summer. If it is necessary to dig up the bulbs, it is better to remove the flower stalks of the plant even during budding, as we do with winter garlic. Then the bulbs will be larger. When growing wild garlic from seeds, it must be borne in mind that the arrow is formed in 4-5 years, and from the bulb in the second year.

Wild garlic appeared in my garden three years ago. It was planted in a bed with perennial bows (see photo). It took me a while to realize that wild garlic is more critical to the quality of the soil, that it requires a good filling with organic matter and neutral acidity. Therefore, for two seasons the wild garlic that I planted seemed to have frozen in its development. Only in the third year after the liming of the soil and the introduction of humus did my bushes come to life and bloom with spherical peduncles. The fact is that I have a growing species of wild garlic - victory onion.

So far, I still have no opportunity to remember the times of my business trips and pickle wild garlic. But it will definitely be over time. In the meantime, I have been making blanks for many years, pickling herbs and young heads of garlic. Ramson, after its appearance in the spring on my site, I prefer to just pick and eat it right away or use it in a salad along with feathers of onion, slime and a hard-boiled egg, which I season with sour cream or mayonnaise. It turns out very tasty and healthy.

When growing wild garlic, you need to know that it, like garlic, has a strong phytoncidal effect and is a good antiseptic. This has long been known to the inhabitants of those places where it grows in nature. For example, finely chopped leaves and onions of wild garlic protect meat from quick spoilage. And in folk medicine, this plant is used for a runny nose, cough, colds. In fresh and dried form, it is used as a blood purifier for pustular skin diseases, for rashes and scrofula. Since olden times, wild garlic has served as an antiscorbutic agent.