Dawn, Its a big help to me. My srep dad and I had what we called winter onions for many years, and through neglect we both lost our onions. I have wanted to start some but have not known what to buy. Is winter and bunching onions the same thing, and what kind will do well here?

Thanks, Larry

Larry,

Are the ones you're talking about perennial bunching onions that grew in clumps and came back every year? They are called various names including potato onions, multiplier onions, Egyptian onions, topsetting onions or walking onions? Those are not specifically the kind we're talking about but they are grown and used similarly.

When talking about onions grown as bunching, scallion-type onions that are harvested and used young before they bulb up, we're talking about types like Beltsville Bunching, Evergreen White, White Lisbon, Purplette or Crimson Forest, which produces purple but not crimson red scallions despite its name. Those can be grown from seed and harvested within a couple of months. Or, you can use seed of any regular onion sown close together and picked young.

You can see perennial bunching onions at the link below that probably are the winter onions you remember. These types are sold and planted in the fall when you plant garlic. Once you have an established patch, they'll live a long time if disease or poor drainage doesn't wipe them out.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Perennial Onions at SESE

Once again Dawn you save my bacon! Thanks! Sounds a lot easier to grow than I thought they would be, which is a good thing.:)

Thanks again!

You're welcome.

Dawn, I think you nailed it. The onions would stay in the ground or you could pull them and store them in a sack, bucket or about anything and plant them again the next year.

I think I know what to look for now. I will try to get some for me and dad.

Thanks, Larry

I love growing green onions and we use a lot of them. They're so easy, no fuss, no muss. Just my style.

I love the perennials. Walking onions are my favorite because they're gorgeous. I've also had potato onions but don't currently. (Note to self: Get potato onions going!) The Farmers' Co-op said they were potato onions anyway but they were just some sort of generic multiplier. Whatever they were, we loved them. They're just planted directly in the ground.

This year, I'm growing bunching onions, too. I've grown them before by just scattering them on the ground but, this year, I've wintersown them. I think these are annuals, at least used as annuals. Might help if I looked more closely to what the packet says. LOL

Diane

I read somewhere, cannot for the life of me remember where, that if you cut the tops off, leaving the white part in the ground the tops will grow again, is that true?

We use a lot of these everyday, I am wondering if one packet of seed would be enough really. :)

The bunching onions grown from seed will form large clumps if you leave them alone and give them a chance to do so. You harvest some and leave the rest to continue growing. If you don't harvest them all, they'll continue forming large clumps and you can harvest them endlessly. You also can divide the clumps and replant individual bulbs in other locations to give you more of them.

You can trim off some of the greens upon occasion to eat, but you don't want to cut all of them off. The greens have to be there conducting photosynthesis in order for the clumps to grow. If you let them go to seed and flower, then they'll essentially reseed themselves, giving you more plants.

The plants grown from one packet of seeds will give you oodles of plants and each plant will keep getting larger and larger, forming clumps of scallions underground and sending up new green shoots. However, as with other perennial vegetables like rhubarb and asparagus, you cannot harvest too many the first year or you damage the ability of the plants to become well-established and to perennialize. So, you can plant them as annuals and harvest them all the first year, or you can harvest occasionally the first year but leave plenty to grow and form larger clumps, or you can plant 2 sets of them....harvest and use most of the first set this year and let the second batch grow and form large clumps that will give you onions for years.

Are there any onions that are annuals? I know many perennials are used as annuals but are any truly annuals?

I think the answer is no but we all know what happens when I think... Just curious.

Diane

I love the idea of letting them perennialize. Plant once, pick a bunch of times...I am game! I will certainly plant two batches for that purpose. YUM.....

I bought a pack of bunching onion seed today. I planted some last year but they were so small that I could not see them without getting on my knees. I will plant these inside or in a box outside where I wont forget and be walking on them.

Larry

Hello! My bunching onions flowered and produced seed. Does this mean they will die? If I had removed the flowers, would they have kept going for more years? Sorry, I am confused because they are described as perennial, but I thought if onions went to seed, their life cycle was over. Thanks for any insight anyone can give me here.

Do you remember the variety name of the bunching onion you planted? The answers to your questions depend on that. Some bunching onions are true perennials, but others are biennials.

Evergreen and Tokyo long. I moved them around last fall so they are now all mixed together.

Which are true perennials? I have potato onions and walking onions, but these don't work as well as the varieties above for me.

Thanks

The bunching onions, which are Allium fistulosum, are the only true perennial onion. This group is commonly known as Welsh onions (not because they are from Wales, by the way, but from the German word 'welsch' meaning foreign), Japanese bunching onions, bunching onions, long green onions, spring onions and scallions. However, people often refer to some non-bunching onions by some of those same names (especially scallions) so it can get confusing.

The other onions commonly referred to as perennial onions are Allium cepa var. aggregatum and are not true perennials but act like perennials. How's that for confusing? This includes all the multiplier onions, also variously referred to as walking onions, Egyptian onions, potato onions (nothing potato-like about them).

There is no true perennial onion that produces huge bulbs like the biennial onions that we all plant in winter and harvest in late Spring and early Summer.

If you like the Allium fistulosum type of onions and want to try others that are not as well-known as Japanese Bunching, Evergreen, Tokyo, etc., then the Oriental seed company based in California, Kitazawa Seeds, offers 8 different varieties of them:

Seeds of Bunching Onion Varieties From Kitazawa Seed

In some soils the perennial onions may not be perennial. They can have a hard time surviving prolonged excessively wet weather in clay soil, so do best in raised beds with well-drained soil, including very well-amended clay.

So do the bunching onions form seeds periodically/yearly?

Thanks for all the info!