Maria’s Guatemalan Perennial Leeks

We got this interesting Allium from a fantastic Guatemalan home gardener named Maria from the Ft. Myers area. Maria speaks an indigenous Mayan language and grows a number of interesting crops from her homeland in her garden. We were excited to receive this variety as a gift on a visit to Maria’s garden given our interest in perennial onions and Alliums.

It remains to be proven that this is in fact a form of leek (Allium ameloprasum). We believe it is likely a perennial, primitive leek form based on the smell, taste and appearance of the foliage. It has flat blades like a leek but is much smaller than typical garden leeks. It certainly is not garlic chives (Allium tuberosum). There is always the possibility that this is a different Allium species entirely.

This Allium divides perpetually and can be constantly teased apart to make more plants. The plants do produce storage bulbs. We are still working to totally understand the life cycle of this variety. In conversation with Maria we got the impression that the plants would go dormant for summer but this may have been a translation issue because our plants stayed green through the entire summer of 2023. Maria has apparently maintained this variety vegetatively for years in Florida so this appears to be another great dividing Allium for the Florida home garden that is a “buy once, have forever” crop.

This is mostly used like a green onion. The raw greens are pungent but of good flavor to top food with. We were surprised that the bulbs cooked up to be very bitter, making them not such a great cooked food.

These plants are on the small side and are not great competing against weeds. These will do best in a full sun garden that gets plenty of attention and especially thorough weeding.

We met Maria through the networking of Cultivate Abundance who does advocacy work and food redistribution work in the farm worker immigrant community in Immokalee, Florida. We encourage you to donate to this cause and others that aid this vulnerable group of people.

This listing is for 10 bare root, live divisions/planting pieces.