Egyptian Walking Onions

The Egyptian Walking Onion also goes by many other names:

Winter Onion

Tree Onion

Top-set Onion

Traveling Onion

are just a few of the many names it is known by,

but no matter what it is called it belongs in every cottage garden.

The Egyptian Walking Onion is a perennial.  That means the bulb will survive through the winter and send out new growth in the spring.  The onion will continue to grow and in late summer tiny onions develop at the top of a long hollow stem. 

Here are my suggestions for planting, harvesting and using the Egyptian Walking Onion. 

  Plant top-sets in late summer, break off the individual, small, new onions and plant the bulb entirely underground leaving the green leaf above ground.

Cover well with mulch, and in the early spring the tiny bulbs will begin to grow.  All parts of the onion can be used.....bulb, stems or leaves.  (I only eat these onions in the early spring)

Harvest the (underground) onion bulb before it sends up the long, hollow stem that supports the

 new onion top-sets, because the onion will become pithy, and not palatable, as the energy goes into producing the new bulbs and root division.

If left in the ground to mature, it will send up a long, hollow stem that the top-set onions form on, and the bulb will divide underground.  The underground bulbs can also be divided in the late fall, separated and planted out individually.

 

These onions are not winter/storage onions.

If you dedicate a corner of your garden to the onions, they will take care of themselves, you can even neglect to replant them in the fall.   The tall hollow stem the top-sets grow on eventually falls over due to the weight of the forming bulbs and "plants" itself and the whole process begins again.  Just keep well watered and mulch in the fall and you will always have a ready supply of tasty onions.

 

I will have top-set bulbs for sale at my booth

Saturdays, in the IFA parking lot

Cedar City

come get some to plant in your garden