Multiplying Onions

11 years ago

Hello I had a local gardener give me what he called dividing onions. He said he was given them 15 years ago and just keeps some every year for replanting. I have done some searching and it looks like they are a type of multiplying onions of which I don't know. He told me you plant one which looks like a green onion and it divides at the base into a large bunch of green onions. He give me 8 or so of these bunches and I saved a couple bunches to plant back. He said he normally replants them in August. So I stored most of them but went ahead and put 6 or so onions in the garden to see what they will do. I say all this to ask if anyone has experience with them. He told me they grow all winter and he pulls them out as needed for consumption all winter. I was curious if they will make seed or planting now and keeping watered if I will have green onions all summer as well.

Thanks Allen

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Comments (3)

soonergrandmom
11 years ago
The ones I have are called Egyptian Walking onions, I think, and they multiply both at the bottom and by making little bulblets at the top of the stalk, which falls over and makes more onions. I was given some a few years ago and must have dropped some when I was getting ready to plant them. They came up right in the middle of the grass and just keep spreading out. I think the official name is Allium proliferum. I don't use them a lot, but have used the tops in the winter a few times.
Macmex
11 years ago
There are quite a number of multipliers out there. I'm not sure which one you have. But it sounds good. Over the last couple of years I have lost a number of multipliers due to the rigors our our climate, grasshoppers and the hectic pace at which I've been living.

The Egyptian Walking onions, however, just keep on going. Nothing stops them!

George
Tahlequah, OK
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
11 years ago
The kind of perennial onion I have is called "Gumbo" and it is a bunching/dividing onion that sounds similar to the one you describe. Actually, technically, it is a shallot. I planted it in a drought year and have had drought years ever since so am just happy at this point that it has survived. I hope eventually my planting will get a great deal larger and will spread more. I have had the same types of grasshopper issues in recent years that George described and pine voles ate half of my original planting, so it has been more challenging to get these plants established than I had expected.

Eventually all perennial onions do make seed, usually once a year. They'll spread on their own by sowing their seed. Walking onions (topsetting types) do it quite easily as their tops bend down to the ground and the tops root into the ground where they touch. That is why they spread more easily than the multipliers that are spread either by self-sown seed or by dividing and replanting. They literally walk across your garden as they enlarge their own planting over the years.

You may not have enough green onions to provide a continual harvest all summer with a new planting, but your little patch of perennial onions will grow and spread and eventually keep you in onions for long periods of time. How many onions you get the first year can vary depending on soil fertility and weather conditions, and also will vary depending on whether any pests are eating your plants which, of course, sets them back substantially when it occurs.