How to Pick Allium Bulbs

How to Pick Allium Bulbs
Hi. This is Yolanda Vanveen on behalf of Expert Village. We're going to talk about Allium bulbs. Did you know that Allium is really an onion and that they smell just like onions and they grow just like onions. They like sun or part-shade. Instead of blooming in the summer, Alliums bloom in late spring, so usually they are blooming by April, May, sometimes even into June. Alliums come in many different colors. We've got the beautiful purple, we've go the firecracker pink and the molly yellow. They are all really pretty. Alliums can be found in Turkey, in Iran, and even into southern Europe. They are another one of those spring-blooming plants that was brought over to the rest of the world back in the 1600s. My favorite Allium is the purple sensation. It's probably between a softball and maybe even bigger than softball-sized when they bloom. They have a big purple bloom that just looks like a big firecracker and the blooms last for one to two months and they will grow almost anywhere as long as it has part-sun to full-sun. The bulbs kind of look like a Hershey's Kiss candy as well, so the tip goes up, the rooty side goes down. When is doubt, go sideways. When I plant them, on the larger purple sensation, I would put three, about three inches deep, in a pot or the ground, it doesn't matter, in at least a group of three in a triangle. You can do groups of twelve to twenty-five in a group. The more the merrier, I've found, the more in a group, the better they look. There's a lot of smaller Alliums that you shouldn't look over. They are tiny, so they are only maybe six inches to a foot tall at the most and the blooms are just like a tiny little head of multiple blooms. This is Allium Ostrowskianum on the pink one and I just love it. It's really a pretty, pretty Allium. They're just a tiny little bulb, so when I plant these, I put like six to twelve in a group at least, because they are tiny and they multiply quickly as well. I just really love them. The Molly is actually native to the Pyrenees Mountains in southern Europe, so they are one of the few Alliums that's not from the Middle East. They are just a short, tiny, little Allium; onion family. They come in many more colors than this as well. Plant them now to enjoy them year after year and they multiply as well. Keep watching, because next we are going to talk about Scylla Siberica.