Every gardener has a nemesis, a plant that just won’t grow as you want it too. For years, mine was onions. I hated them, but each year I came back for more punishment and failure, lamenting to anyone who would listen that in my last garden, down in the valley, they grew just fine.
It’s true. On my last allotment, lower down, they romped away, but up on the hill, where I am now, just above the cloud line, they didn’t. But for years I carried on trying regardless, like an increasingly shabby onion seller on a punctured bike with a torn beret, a tatty piece of string around his neck where onions should be, peddling frantically against the one thing that was stopping me, the ecosystem of my garden.…
