Multiplying Onion
Back in April one of the excerpts I shared from the collection of Pigeon Roost articles mentioned potato onions. After publishing the post I started wondering if the onions my friends found at an old homeplace on their property could be potato onions.
Lots of folks left comments on those posts about their family growing different types of onions that stayed in the garden year round or grew back each year in the same place.
Thanks to Blind Pig reader Bill Dotson I have a good stand of walking onions that are hardy enough to make it in the cold.
Last week the Arkansas Hillbilly mailed me a pack of his multiplying onions. I was tickled to death to get them since I’ve heard so many older folks talk about their parents and grandparents planting them each year so that they’d have green onions all winter long.
There was a note in the package that said if I wanted to know more about the onions I could give him a call.
Boy I’m glad I called him.
He’s grown the onions for over 20 years. His start came from Mrs. Stokes who was born in 1915. She died in 2000 at the age of 85.
Mrs. Stokes got the onions from twin sisters who were older than her. They said the onions had been passed down in their family for generations. In fact, they thought the onion sets came with the first members of their family to immigrate to the US.
He said over the years he’d found what worked best for the onions was to plant them from August 15 to the first of September.
When planting, dig a long fur (furrow), water it really good, add some fertilizer, and cover the fur back up. Plant the onion bulbs about a foot apart on top.
As the onions grow all winter they will make smaller onions on each side of the main bulb as they multiply.
Come about April or May when the onions begin to bloom, dig the remaining bulbs up and spread them out to dry. Once dried, store till August till you start the whole process over again.
He said even though they were cold hardy he didn’t advise leaving them in the ground year round because as they multiply they sort of choke themselves out and the onions get smaller and smaller.
We planted all the bulbs he sent following his directions except we planted them a little closer together—about seven or eight inches apart.
I’m tickled pink to have the onions and hope that they do indeed multiply so that we can keep them growing for years to come and even have enough to share.
When I shared the onion story in a recent video several folks said their family grew them and called them potato onions.
Thinking of the walking onions, the onions my friends found, and these multiplying onions makes me realize growing onions that have a perennial nature has been a tradition in many areas across the country and beyond.
Last night’s video: Using Light Bread for BLTs in Appalachia.
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Love to find some Guinea nest onions sets or seeds that someone would share or Sell
I think potato onions are leeks.
I enjoyed your postings on multiplying onions. They are definitely different from Egyptian onions which tip over “plant”their seed on top of the ground and grow more. The multiplying onions in your post do seem to grow a lot like potatoes, each bulb forming clusters of new onions. By the way, I like onions any way I can get them, especially with a plate of Pintos and hard crust corn bread that came from an old iron skillet. Once I’ve got the bread crumbled and the beans piled on top, I throw everything we have at it. Tonight we fixed it and it satisfied my Tennessee stomach like nothing else. I had several layers on my plate: corn bread, good ole soup beans, tomatoes, onions, chow chow, and lots of Louisanne hot sauce.
Well that seems pretty spectacular. I can see you busy with this new toy reproducing onions!
You go girl!
Tipper, I, too, enjoy a BLT on light bread. I prefer the bread toasted in a pop-up toaster and spread with either Hellman’s or Dukes on both slices. Like Matt, I use what you call a case knife, not a spoon. 🙂 I also like to slice the sandwich diagonally to give me 2 wedges.
I was a bit disappointed by last night’s video. Corrie promised instructions on a lettuce wrap but I never saw it.
Blessings to all . . .
I guess the multiplying onions was what mama called “volunteer onions” but they were smaller. I do remember them coming back a few years until daddy plowed them up. Tipper, I know you are excited about them and let us see them when they start coming up. If anyone can make them grow, you can cause you definitely have a green thumb! Enjoyed the video about BLT’s. We had them for supper friday. It’s still funny what kind of mayo we all like. Have a great day!!
I will definitely have to see if i can find some of these for my vet friend who loves onions!!! they would be right up his alley. TY for sharing this info…
I’m very excited now that my order of walking onions is on it’s way. Here in the heat and rain we get in Florida I haven’t found onions or garlic very cooperative BUT Hoss Tools had a video on planting walking onions in the south. I decided to give those a try this year and after reading your article, I’m really looking forward to them. I’ll try your friends method of planting and see what happens but need to determine where I want to grow them as sunshine in my yard is a limited resource. I’m also going to try container green onions – but can someone please invent a container umbrella?
You could do what Tipper and Matt do for their greenhouses: form a hard-wire cage and affix plastic above it. You’d have to keep it watered, but at least you could protect it from the glaring sun
Tipper, I hope you will keep us posted on how the onions do during the winter. It’s hard to believe my mom didn’t raise the multiplying onions. Maybe she didn’t have anyone to share the sprouts with her in the remote part of eastern KY where most visitors were local kinfolks. The onions would surely have been a welcome addition to the soup beans and taters during the winter months.
I have left summer onions (some form of a sweet onion) in the garden to regrow in the fall and into the winter. It sorta works but, as mentioned, they are smaller. And some kinds of critters eat them. I arrived at that because I never saw any fall onion sets. I guess they are a poor choice for commercial sale because they would be a one-time sale and likely in small quantity as well to a small number of gardeners. Our now global distribution is a major reason to be able to assume fresh ones can be found coming from somewhere year round.
Hope your new-old onions do very well or you. I know you will enjoy having fresh onions through the winter when so few things are green.
Tipper, your ADVENTURES in gardening NEVER cease to astound me!!! If it’s out there, you’ll try it and surprisingly your success to failure ratio is very high. I hate to rub it in but you are in some of the plushest, best dirt in the USA and that helps. Your location is really quite temperate as well resulting in gardening success. I know you work hard, but you’ve also got NATURAL gardening abilities too. Also, who wouldn’t like onions walking, jumping, skiing, wondering, proliferating for years upon years? It’s a wonderful thing indeed and I love onions just about as much as taters. Btw, I was making Murrman’s pickled peppers yesterday and there were real hot ones in the mix looking just like regular peppers so my left hand is still on fire, I burnt my upper lip and nose and to hell with hot peppers!!! It’s lots of fun being on fire and in excruciating pain so thanks California packers!!!
Tipper, after watching you garden all year, I have been inspired. I don’t have a “Deer Hunter” to plow and help, nor a good place to have a garden, BUT when the Green Stalk’s went on sale at the end of the season, I bought one! I’m looking forward to using it next spring. I may even buy my organic soil now, if there still is any, just in case there are shortages next year. Now,I can just plan my “garden” for next year! I really appreciate you and your family and friends for inspiring so many people…myself included!
Thank you, Tipper for reminding me. Onions, garlic and ginger have always been a part of my family’s preventions and cures for winter colds and flu. The ginger when combined with lemon juice and honey makes a fine hot drink for when the tummy goes funny. I’ll have to locate some perennial onions to start growing. I forgot about doing that this year with all the other things going on.
“ONIONS”!!! I use them practically every day even though raw onions give me indigestion since I’m getting older. I used to not believe that they would but I do now LOL I use them in so many dishes I cook. I generally keep one cleaned and chopped in a fruit jar in the ice box so they’re ready when I need them. Life would be sad without “ONIONS”
I was just gifted some multiplying onions (walking onions, I guess) this summer. They have a very strong taste, that I really liked. Now, do you think they will be alright over winter in CNY? Don’t know? Its an experiment. Maybe I should pull a few out & dry, just in case the others don’t make it & replant in the spring/summer?
On a completely different note: Tipper, you have really turned me on to Jesse Stuart. Finally got a copy of “Beyond Dark Hills” from ThriftBooks, that I have been patiently looking for since you had him mentioned in a post. I was able to get Head of W-Hollow, but Dark Hills was always unavailable. The part that resonated with me the most was the section where he comes home to visit and says, “Home was good to see again….Here was the life I liked. I knew it. But I kept it to myself. I didn’t want people to know how much I loved the hills and how much I had hated them. It took life beyond these hills to make one love life among the hills. I had gone behind the dark hills to taste of life. I found it sour when I went beyond where the blue rim of hills touches the sky. I had wanted to go beyond and find out all that was there. I wanted to taste of life. I tasted of it from books and still and the merry-go-round. It was not sweet like the life of the hills.” Although, I come from a different ‘landscape’/area this statement fit me perfectly when I went to college. I went from upper NY, to just outside of NYC for school. I hated myself there. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I mostly did “bad”. Everyone thought it was so cool, when I would come home & they were impressed by my vicinity to the city & my experience of being able to go to college. I was so lonesome (even tho, I made friends & was good at schoolwork) that when school was finished I could not think beyond coming back to my home. I had made some tentative plans to go teach English in Korea. But I came back home, with much derision from family, and haven’t left. Still living in the old homeplace. If I never left this house until I die, that would be fine with my soul. I, too, found life ‘sour’ just as Stuart did. My illusions of what the great, wide world should be were shattered. I often wish I had never gone to college, as my life is not any further ahead in some areas (financially, socially, opportunity, etc) than it was before. But, since college I have a curious mind & wish for intellectual stimulation (reading, discussing literature, poetry, art, philosophy, theology) that I can’t find in my home town. This is a dissatisfaction that I can’t rectify. I understand what the parents/elders in his book were aware of, when they wanted to discourage their children from education.
Patty-I’m not sure about the onions. But Bill Dotson who shared his walking onions with me lives in Ohio and they do just fine for him in the winter. Glad you enjoyed the book! That was one of my favorite parts of it too 🙂
Patty, I had the opposite experience. I struggled to get a college education; and when I did, I wanted to leave my hometown, Raleigh, and experience the world. Family obligations prevented my doing so. My job afforded me the opportunity to travel around the US and eventually to Europe. Finally, after living a half century in my home town, I left to take a job in Florida then in Texas after a few years. I’ve found Texas suits me to a T. I live in central Texas on the edge of both the black land prairie on one side and the hill country on the other. The wide open vistas and very nice people never disappoint.
To salve you intellectual curiosity, I suggest you use the Internet. It has an endless supply of it, and it has forums where you can discuss any subject imaginable. If you are multi-lingual, the content multiplies.
Good luck.
When growing up in the 50’s my mother had onions she called multiplying onions. They would come back each year on their own without replanting them. From what I remember, they reminded me of what we now call green onions. They would get balls of seed on the tops of the green stems if left alone. I guess we eventually plowed them up and killed them.
I was reading one of the old blogs about hog killing time and I thought of when we and a lot of our neighbors would raise a hog or two each year. Along about now they would be getting close to 500lbs (the goal, needed to be fat for lard) and would no longer be fed much slop but almost all corn getting them ready to butcher in late November. Like it was said on the blog, pork was a very important staple of the country folks. We never had a cow to butcher or ate much beef.
Randy, I remember those onions that had the balls of seed on top of the stems. I guess that’s why daddy plowed them up. Must have thought they were wild onions but they also remind me of what I called green onions. I also wanted to say we killed hogs, and we never had a cow to butcher either. I remember the lard, and pork was what we ate more of. One of my favorite snacks was cracklins and sweet potatoes. Mama made cracklin corn bread and cracklin flour bread too. I remember some of my school friends lived in town and when I mentioned eating cracklins and sweet potatoes for a snack, they laughed. That was ok, they didn’t know what they were missing.
Gloria, I guess I was different, I never really liked cracklings, but as I have said before, you had two choices when you set down at the table, they were eat what is on the table or go hungry, so I would eat them when they were in the cornbread. One of my all time favorite meals was at breakfast. It was fried fatback or side meat, sawmill gravy (hunky doo to us) made from the grease and homemade biscuits and a piece of good cantaloupe made it extra good. Hog heaven for sure! There was never any cereal or toast on the table at home when we were children. We would eat this several mornings every week. I think I would want that for my last meal if I was on death row.
I loved BLT’s on light bread too! My tommy toe tomatoes are finished up, well maybe two or three are hanging on the vine. I will try them today but one of my Sunday School friends has been bringing in a basket of large red tomatoes every Sunday for the last month to share and I sure have enjoyed them. I have a large one sitting on my kitchen counter and intend to eat it today. Probably will be the last one till next year but oh so delicious!
Many years ago my brother was down in NE MS and found some multiplying green onions and mailed me a little package because he knew I liked them too. I planted them and they come up every year but I think I should have taken some out in the spring like they told you and let them dry and then plant next August. I may try that:)
As I read your post, I remember my Mom talking about dividing her onions in the garden every year when I was a kid. She doesn’t have a huge vegetable garden anymore, she mostly has flowers and such now that all of us kids are on our own. She doesn’t have all the mouths to feed, just her and Dad, so she concentrates on flowers these days. My Dad likes to plant his favorite vegetables still, but he does mostly container gardening now. I think he does that to stay out of Mom’s territory in the flower beds. I will have to ask her what kind of onions she did have. I think she still has onions coming up in odd places she hasn’t planted them in years. I enjoyed hearing the story of the onions the Arkansas Hillbilly gifted you. It’s really amazing to think how seeds and bulbs from plants hundreds of years ago still produce edible foods and beautiful flowers. I don’t know why my brain thinks all plants die out in one generation, God made us humans to keep reproducing for thousands of years generation after generation, so why not plants, too? He has blessed us with such an amazing creation around us!
Donna. : )