Improve Your Health with Garlic and Onion

By Rajeev Sharma

Nature has provided mankind with a gamut of fruits, vegetables, dairy products and other sources to maintain a healthy lifestyle. These natural sources of food are rich in vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and other essential nutrients. Moreover, they have numerous unexplored healing powers. Through this series, we have made a sincere attempt to unfold the various benefits of these foods. You will find a cure for every big or small disease in this invaluable series, and will discover what treasure nature holds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diamond Books
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9788128834516

Book preview

ONION : SPECIES AND

GENERAL INFORMATION

Botanical name: Allium cepa (LINN.)

Family: N.O. Liliaceae

Part Used—Bulb.

Medicinal Properties and Uses—Antiseptic, diuretic. A roasted onion has useful applications in tumours and earache.

Syrup made with onion juice is good for cold and coughs. Hollands gin, in which onions have been macerated, is a cure for gravel and dropsy.

POTATO ONION

Botanical name: Allium cepa, var. aggregatum

Family: N.O. Liliaceae

Synonyms—The Underground Onion, Egyptian Onion.

Part Used—Bulb.

Potato Onion, also known as the Underground Onion because of its tendency to increase its bulbs beneath the surface, is very prolific. It gives full-sized, tender bulbs in midsummer, three months before the harvest of ordinary onion crop. The bulbs are rather large, of irregular shape, over two to three inches in diameter and about two inches thick. The flesh of the bulb is of agreeable taste and good quality. The skin is thickish and copper yellow.

Lindley’s Treasury of Botany names Potato Onion as the ‘Egyptian Onion’, and states that it was brought from Egypt about the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is much cultivated in a huge amount in the West of England, being quite hardy, productive, and as mild in quality as the Spanish Onion.

This variety of onion produces no seeds and is propagated by the lateral bulbs, which it throws out underground in considerable numbers. It requires a well-worked, moderately rich soil, and is largely grown in Devonshire, where the climate being mild, it is planted in warm, sheltered areas in mid-winter, generally on the shortest day, with the hope of taking up the crop at mid summer. In colder parts, however, the planting is deferred until late winter or early spring, yet the earlier it can be planted, the better. The bulbs should be planted almost on the surface, and in rows 15 inches apart, with 6 to 10 inches space between the bulbs in the rows.

Each bulb will throw out a number of offsets all round it, which grow and develop into full-sized bulbs. When they are ready for pulling, they are taken up and dried, and then stored for use and for future planting. When the plants attain full maturity, each bulb produces seven or eight bulbs of various sizes. The strongest of these, in turn produces a number of bulbs further, while the weaker ones generally grow into a single, large bulb. The largest bulbs do not always keep so well as the medium-sized ones.

ONION TREE

Botanical name: Alliurn cepa, var. proliferum

Synonym—L’oignon d’Egypte.

Part Used—Bulb. (Onions are a valuable disinfectant. Country people hang up a string of onions as a protection against infectious diseases, and it has constantly been observed that the onions take the disease while the inmates remain immune. For this reason, it is important to examine onions before they are cooked, and to discard any which are bad.)

The Tree Onion is a peculiar kind of onion that produces at the top of a strong stem about two feet high, instead of seeds, a cluster of small bulblets about the size of a hazel nut; the stems bearing so heavily that they often require some support. These bulblets are green at first, but later acquire a brownish-red colour.

This singular variety of Onion was introduced into this country from Canada in 1820. The French call it ‘I’ oignon d’Egypte,’ but there is no proof that it is a native of that country. It is quite probable that it is the common onion that was introduced from France into Canada by the early colonists and later got modified by the climate.

The Tree Onion is propagated from the little stem bulbs alone, which are set in February, 2 inches deep and 4 inches apart in rows, 8 inches asunder. When planted in spring, these small bulbs form large ones by the end of the year, but do not produce any bulblets until the following year. When the bulbs are matured, they can be preserved in a cool place after they have been allowed to dry in the sun for a brief period. They are flat and of a copper colour, their flesh being tolerably agreeable to the taste, but rather deficient in flavour. The bulblets are excellent for pickling and keep very well, though the large bulbs do not always keep very long.

Other Species

A variety of the Tree Onion, called the Catawissa Onion or Perennial Tree Onion, was brought from America thirty or forty years ago. It is distinguished from the ordinary Tree Onion by the great vigour of its growth and the rapidity with which the bulblets grow without being detached from the top of the stem. They have hardly attained their full size when they emit stems, which also produce bulblets, and in a favourable season this second tier of bulblets emits