Walking Onions

[heirloomgal]

How to Plant and Grow Egyptian Walking Onions | Gardener’s Path

Egyptian walking onions are easy to grow and produce tasty underground bulbs as well as topsets. Learn how to grow these unique alliums now on Gardener's Path.

gardenerspath.com

Darn, I planted mine deeper than what this article suggests!
Well, .

 

[digitS']

I have a few walking onions near the chives. I no longer remember where they came from ... or, why . They are much too strong flavored to be appreciated.

No mention of shallots ? This year, with its downsizing, must be the first time in over 3 decades that I haven't had shallots. They are seriously missed. Recent years have been this mess over several seasons of growing offspring of what was originally a French hybrid variety. With every saved seed episode, they were more diverse and further from the original French type. Well, I say "original" but I certainly don't know what the parents were of the hybrid.

I have never grown potato onions but with so much change but still small multipliers, I wondered if maybe that was a parent. Anyway, the good thing was that they still had a shallot flavor. So, i didn't lose much by messing around . However, knowing what the harvest will look like and a consistency, adds something positive to my gardening experience.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

@Zeedman you know onions!! Thanks for this info, I feel like I know I what I'm growing now! Maybe time to start experimenting with onions, I have a friend whose gotten very into perennial vegetables so I'm getting drawn in too.

and here we go! i really like onion flowers and also eating onions (we eat a lot of onions - to the point that a lot of people mention that when we give them food that perhaps we can use less onions... ).

 

[heirloomgal]

I have a few walking onions near the chives. I no longer remember where they came from ... or, why . They are much too strong flavored to be appreciated.

No mention of shallots ? This year, with its downsizing, must be the first time in over 3 decades that I haven't had shallots. They are seriously missed. Recent years have been this mess over several seasons of growing offspring of what was originally a French hybrid variety. With every saved seed episode, they were more diverse and further from the original French type. Well, I say "original" but I certainly don't know what the parents were of the hybrid.

I have never grown potato onions but with so much change but still small multipliers, I wondered if maybe that was a parent. Anyway, the good thing was that they still had a shallot flavor. So, i didn't lose much by messing around . However, knowing what the harvest will look like and a consistency, adds something positive to my gardening experience.

Steve

You don't eat the green walking onions? I grew shallots once many years ago, but they didn't seem to taste very different from the onions - which were bigger. I might feel different now though; do you feel the flavor difference is really significant?

 

[digitS']

... walking onions? ... shallots ... do you feel the flavor difference is really significant?

Some Springs, we make some use of the walking onions, once or twice.

I certainly enjoy the flavor of shallots. We ate onions alot when I was growing up. Really, we still do. Perhaps, my thinking on shallots and onions is partly that the flavor of onions is so commonplace.

Steve

 

[Zeedman]

I don't think I ever grew shallots, although I might have without knowing it. I grew several heirloom multiplier onions, and the larger ones (which might have been shallots) were not winter hardy in my climate. There might be a gray hazy line between shallots & potato onions.

There were two very hardy multiplier onions that I grew for years, which when Fall planted, formed nests of 5-8 1" onions. I had hoped to breed them to increase their size, but they were wiped out the same year I lost my garlic collection. The garlic was replaceable... sadly, the onions were not.

Since 2022, I have been growing some crossed offspring of Kelly Winterton's large potato onions. I suspect that Kelly's onions were not very hardy, which is the reason no one seems to have them now. I had hoped to breed something hardy from the crossed seed I received, but due to my life changes, that project never received as much attention as it deserved. The 2023 onions over wintered indoors, and I planned to test their winter hardiness in the garden next year, after a stock increase. But the weather derailed that plan, and all of my stock died this year waiting to be planted. Apparently onion breeding is poorly suited to my climate.

 

[flowerbug]

...Apparently onion breeding is poorly suited to my climate.

perhaps those types of onions, but i've certainly found it is not an issue here and i think we get pretty cold weather which would be similar enough to what you have there...

the Tokyo bunching onions i've been growing are surviving our winters without any kind of winter prep or mulch in mostly clay soil. the other onions i've grown were just from sets and plants from the greenhouse (including yellow, white and red onions and specific giant varieties Kelcea and Candy, both of which survive our winters unmulched). i've gotten zillions of seeds from all of them, if you'd like me to send any of these to you it would be easy to put them in an envelope... ?

among the Tokyo bunching onions there must be some leeklike genes going on because the stems of a few plants are rather huge and not at all what i started out with. i'm not sure any seeds i send would have that going on or not. i'm not isolating any of these. i pretty much grow most of the bunching onions for the flowers, once again i'm hardly picking any for eating and have to raze the patch somewhat come spring due to speedwell trying to go through it...

oh, and i may now have the bunching onion genes from the seeds you sent me all those years ago. i'm not sure i eradicated it and so there may be some around still about where i started growing it.

plus for fun i also had various other allium species planted around here which were blooming. blue and purple flowering. though i've not seen any signs of those in the onion crops in recent years. i have seen some garlic flowers and perhaps those crossed with some red onions i grew one season but they did not repeat when i planted those again. i was hoping for some kind of mayhem because it is what would normally happen here anyways with all the bees i see on the flowers in the spring. that is my main way of taking a native bee survey is to go watch the spring onion flowers.