SPLENDOR IN THE ONION GRASS
Onion grass leaps forth from the earth in March and April, heralding the longer days and warmer temperatures of spring. It is one of the seasonal scourges of lawn-proud suburbanites and the mowing crews who service those lawns.
If you saw a clump of onion grass that had been dug up and cleaned, you might mistake it for a handful of undernourished scallions. Most sources suggest that the bulbs and greens are edible, though nobody I know has tried this. As members of the large allium family, onion grass is certainly kin to common edible onions, scallions, leeks and savory species. Dairy cows definitely eat onion grass, which, back in the days before homogenization and ultra pasteurization, made some milk products taste a little oniony in the spring.
In the lawn, onion grass, or Allium vineale, is unmistakable. Ranging in size from a single grass-like leaf to clumps larger in diameter than a basketball, onion grass grows about ten times faster than common lawn grass. The stems are hollow and tend to curl at the tops. If broken, they smell very oniony. In my lawn when the grass is two inches high, the onion grass is ten inches higher. It cannot be missed. You can mow it and the blades will fall to earth, but it will rebound with the ferocity of a Komodo dragon. By next day it will be back to taunt you and a week later the clump will be even bigger.
In garden beds onion grass can be deceptive. The leaves look a bit like grape hyacinth or Dutch iris foliage. Fortunately I sniff before I dig, preventing me from losing desirable plants as I attempt to eradicate the onion grass.
So how do you cope with onion grass? If you have an extremely dull social life and a small to medium infestation, you can hand dig the clumps. The problem is that if you miss even a few of the small bulblets, the onion grass will come roaring back, either in the late fall or next spring. There are, of course, chemical fixes, some of which will do the job nicely. Round-Up® or glycophosphate is probably the most environmentally friendly of them, but even that must be handled carefully. Like all non-selective herbicides, it will kill plants that you want to keep in addition to the plants that you want to get rid of.
I try to find a middle ground between devoting my life to onion grass eradication and letting the clumps get completely out of hand. I dig every single plant and clump that I see out of the beds with my trusty hori-hori garden knife. The lawn clumps, which are far larger, are removed at the slow but steady pace of five clumps at a time whenever I go out into the garden. I am careful to dig out all of the bulbs and bulblets and I choose to believe that these efforts at least keep me even with the onion grass.
I have come to find onion grass eradication curiously relaxing. I get down on my knees to dig it out of the beds, enabling me to see the garden from the ground up. This is also a great way to spot other trouble makers like chickweed, which can be pulled at the same time. I frequently discover ornamental plants that I had forgotten and find places to put new plants.
Digging out onion grass, like all other mindless, repetitive activities, has its own rhythm and cadence. It’s great for untangling mental knots and seems especially useful for writer’s block. People with other kinds of creative impulses might compose symphonies, solve math problems or plot dinner parties while digging the bulbs. The possibilities are endless. When you couple the gratification of tangible results with all that easy inspiration, onion grass begins to look less like a garden saboteur and more like a gardener’s godsend.
At least that’s what I tell myself. Of course it’s equally possible that these fantasies are the result of spending too much time in the sun–plucking out onion grass.