Yesterday I went out and harvested some green onions to add to a stir fry we were making for supper. The interesting thing about the onions is we planted them last fall.
They’ve grown slowly all winter, allowing us to enjoy fresh green onions when we took a notion to eat them. Now that spring of the year is here I’m wanting to use the rest of them up so that we can plant more.
I planted a small little bed of onions last week and noticed a few of them emerging from the ground today. We all enjoy green onions. I like to dip mine in salt if I eat them raw.
Recently I used the term onion button. That is what we call the small bulbs you can buy this time of the year for planting. I’ve also heard them called onion sets.
Another interesting phrase I came across in the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English is Jacob’s onions.
Jacob’s onion noun A green onion.
1975 Purkey Madison Co 53-54 A variety of vegetables grew in long neat rows; tender green onions (called Jacob’s onions), peas, beets, carrots, radishes, lettuce, beans, parsnips, tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet and Irish potatoes. Ibid. 106 I will never forget the endless bundles of crisp spring onions with their long white heads and slender green blades, which my mother prepared for market. Mama called them “Jacob’s Onions.” I don’t know why unless it was because they were so prolific.
I love the freshness a green onion adds to a meal, but I also love to see them emerge from the ground as their sword shaped leaves reach towards the spring sky.
Last night’s video: Working in the Garden; Checking on Matt at Corie & Austin’s; & Studying on Major Life Changes.
Tipper
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I love onions also. In my part of Appalachia we had always called them onion sets. I had never heard the term onion buttons until I heard you say it. Interesting how the same thing has multiple names.
One evening as a child I was sent to the garden to get green onions for supper. I started pulling up onions and thought they were rotten due to the skin having dirt on it. I pulled up the entire row and threw them down. When I informed my Mama about the problem I got a good lesson in gardening.
I love to sauté them with mushrooms and butter … A bit of goat cheese melted on top.
I admit to loving onions of every variety, from big Vidalias, whites and reds, to leeks, to green onions, to wild ramps. Most everything tastes better with onions minus desserts. Meats, taters, salads, eggs, and casseroles all taste 100 times better with loads of onions, and I like them raw, too. I’ve got freeze dried onions as well, and they are wonderful. In truth, onions and garlic are probably two of the most important staple food items, right up there with salt and pepper, to improve the taste of just about everything. Yum, yum onions!
They go so good with soupbeans and Cornbread. I love onions .
Being outside a consensus doesn’t make you wrong, in fact it makes a higher likelihood that you are right.
Papaw mentioned not having a TV, I have a TV but most of time I only watch about 1 hr of Gunsmoke and two 30 minute shows of The Rifleman- my favorite western when growing up, each night. I still can’t count fast enough to count the number of shots when it first comes on. I just look at 3 TV station websites on my iPad. My reason for knowing the 3 were forecasting the same weather last night and today, so far it has not came close to happening. I did watch one station for about 10 minutes last night and find it funny that weatherman was telling about how accurate the stations new lightening detector was at predicting how bad the lightening would be in the storms. I hope they kept the receipt, maybe they can take it back and get their money back!
I didn’t receive my email this morning either . I’m happy to see that all is well !
Have a wonderful day everyone!
Like Randy, my mom called them multiplying onions. It was one of the things we had on our table for most meals. My husband is allergic to any kind of raw onion so I have not eaten them for years but we cook with them all the time. In Cajun country the onion is part of what they call “the holy trinity”- onions, bell peppers and celery. A lot of Cajun dishes include these.
Ramps and green onions are two of my favorite savory vegetable memories from childhood. We called the onion sets buttons or bulbs; both terms were used interchangeably. Eaten fresh or cooked (especially in hoe cakes) we always had them in our garden. The ramps we had to gather wild but they were so good!
I enjoy green onions too! I had some that I let go to seed last year in our tubs. The seeds must have fallen in the tubs and on the ground, because they sprouted up in late January . We let them grow until the last week of March. We had to pull them up to empty the tubs dirt into the raised beds my husband built for me this year. I was surprised how many had grown and they were delicious! I still have those that grew in the ground, so I’ll be harvesting them once we finish eating the ones we harvest from the tubs. I can’t wait to get more planted to enjoy all gardening season long.
They are called Egyptian Walking onions.
There’s nothing better than a garden onion with a mess of soup beans and cornbread and in a salad. I have always loved onions as well as garlic.
Seems like Daddy always grew green onions in the garden. We loved them! I remember one year my Brother sent me a box of onions, he thought they were fantastic and wanted me to have some too. Well, I planted them here in SC PA and they come up every year. I’m so busy I’m not sure how they do that unless they have a little bulb at the very top end of and it falls off to start another onion for the next year. I just know I always have green onions coming up in the spring and I haven’t planted any since I put that box of onions in the ground years ago:)
Tipper, you really, really got a lot done!!! I remember when I could bend and move that fast, but now-a-days it seems like I’m in slow motion. I’m thrilled if I get one thing done. Oh, I have a large area of those hardy geraniums you have and mine are a deep pinkish-purple. They show up every spring in my flower bed and just brightens up the area. So happy you all are together and helping each other.
I have never heard them called onion buttons. Folks back home called them sets or ‘bubs’. In a few weeks it will be time for ramps to replace green onions in my kitchen while I wait for my onion sets to mature. After I found a secret ramp patch, I use them in any dish that calls for green onions. They are mighty tasty in potato salad and even better eaten raw with some salt.
Onions are one of the things I don’t care for; partly it’s the taste and partly it’s the texture. My husband loves them, so I try to keep the green spring onions on hand for him whenever I can to make up for the fact that I won’t cook with onions.
Onion sets is the name we used. Never heard of onion bulbs. Our family planted onion sets every year. I remember going out to the garden and eating one with a red, ripe tomato. Oh, how good. I lost my taste for a lot of foods after having the Covid virus 2 1/2 years ago, but I can still taste green onions. My husband and I plant onion sets every spring. The last couple of years they haven’t done well. Don’t know why. We have a lot of voles around here and they will eat certain plants so it may be them or one of the many other varmints. Enjoyed your video last evening.
I don’t plant onions in the fall because I cannot find sets, would if I could. But I do “save” some through the fall and winter and into the following spring. They are not as good though. I have a very nice bed of some sweet and some white onions now but have not pulled any yet. I have a habit of counting how many I plant. I started doing that because my garden is so small. I planted about 140 this year.
Onion Buttons they are to me
and Buttons they will always be!
Your onions are not old. This was their year to shine! They were planted, by a grower, as seed last spring and allowed to grow until last fall when they were harvested as onion buttons to be replanted this year and regrow into a full sized onion. Planting buttons for storable onions thusly in a home garden allows the space they would otherwise occupy to be used for other purposes.
If you want to grow green onions, plant seeds or starts (transplants). If you want to grow bigger slicing (or cooking) onions, plant Buttons (or call them sets if you have to).
I was well into my adult years before I heard them called anything other than onion buttons. I had married and moved away from my childhood home. I felt the urge to garden and onions are the first thing I plant in spring. I went to a local hardware store to purchase some.
“Onion buttons?” “Yes, like you plant in the garden to grow onions for winter!” “Like this?” “Yes!” “These are onion Sets.” “Ok, you can sell me half a pound of onion sets and I’ll buy half a pound of onion buttons. Deal?”
” I like to dip mine in salt if I eat them raw.”
Me too! I learned from old timers early on how to pour a small pile of salt either on my plate or on the table so I could “dip” my green onion into it.
Nothing much better this time of year and in the coming weeks than a plate of greens dressed with crumbled bacon and the grease from that bacon with a handful of fresh green onions.
Looking for old timey bunching onions Thomas Mott OPP,ALABAMA
I’ve heard them called buttons my whole life. I love them used in so many ways.
I didn’t get my usual email this morning, so I had to come directly to the blog. I hope everything is okay.
Laura Lee-check your spam or junk folder. Sometimes the emails will wind up there 🙂
I love green onions cooked in a dish or raw. Yum
Love green onions. We used to eat them with salt too. A throwback to my mother’s Appalachian heritage.
I love green onions too. They add a touch of great flavor to almost any meal you make, whether it be adding them to your dish while cooking, or eating them raw as a side dish. My Mama always called them onion sets and I do too, but hubby calls them onion bulbs. They do look like tiny light bulbs. Lol.I never heard them called Jacobs onions. I definitely noticed your silver bowl and your Rada knife in the picture. I love those types of knives and I have several little stainless bowls like that one. Hope all is well and happy with Granny and little Ira. Looking forward to the next video of Corie’s house. Take care and God Bless.
I am not much on eating green onions but will eat a few raw onions on a hotdog or hamburger and in pinto beans. I have heard the old timers call the “bulbs” on the top of green onions buttons.I remember Mother having green onions in our garden when I was growing up she called multiplying onions that would sprouts back up each spring. I have planted onion sets in the fall and they would begin sprouting out in late Feb. or early March right along with the wild onions. I am thinking about yesterday’s post and the old folks predicting the weather by looking at different signs. So far the weather men at out three local news stations have badly missed the forecast for the night and the forecast for today has went from 100% to only about 30%. They were all forecasting heavy rain and bad thunderstorms during the night and day as late as 11 o’clock last night. Looking out the bathroom window I counted about 5 rain drops on the windshield of my car. One of them likes to tell about all of the modern technology his station has for predicting the weather. I am not complaining, I had rather see them wrong than right when it comes to forecasting severe weather. A weather man is only one I know that can be wrong half of the time and keep his job!
I don’t even have a TV so I have to go to the weather channel on my computer for all my erroneous forecasts.