22 FEBRUARY 1946, Page 16

In My Garden

The popularity of that rather queer vegetable, the potato-onion, seems to be on the increase. Its virtues are preached, for example, in "Home and County," the wise little periodical of the Women's Institutes. It is, I think, rather better than the shallot, which it resembles, and has the advantage that it is very easy to grow in any soil and can be started in February. A queerer vegetable, for which I nurse a fancy, chiefly because of its queerness, is the tree-onion, which also gives the minimum of trouble to the cultivator. Among the few little willows round the bird- bath, Daphnoides surpassed others in the earliness and fullness of its