Salad onions or spring onions and chives

[KarenParticipant]

I have 2 questions pertaining to the 2 vegetables.

1) are they considered as leaf or root plants? I am always confused and uncertain about it.

2) they are also considered to be perennial vegetables. They are considered as perennials only when one cuts the green parts? What happens when one uses the whole spring onion (salad onions) with the small white thin bulb part?

[charlesModerator]

Hi Karen, salad/spring onion (same thing) and chives are leaf veg, same as leeks, since we want their leafy goodness and not too much basal swelling on the salad onions,
The salad onions we normally sow are not perennial and as you say, one harvest is the end of them. I have not tried cutting their green top to make them resprout.
You can buy certain types of onion which keep dividing at the base. Likewise Babington leek.
And yes, chives are true perennial!

[SuellaParticipant]

Has anyone tried growing shallots or onion sets close together in a pot for salad/spring type onions? I have too many shallots and red onion sets and thought this might work well.

Or might the taste be too strong or different?

[charlesModerator]

Its a brilliant idea. A bit related to Karen’s question about the difference, or not, in onions.
Any of shallot or onion bulbs and sets pass through a “spring/salad onion” phase before they bulb in summer.
Buying sets to grow as spring onion does cost more, but if you have some left over it makes sense.
You will notice a bit more green leaf and less white stem than on varieties bred for salad onion.

[KarenParticipant]

Oh crap! haha! Just finished sowing a whole lot of spring onions! Backing to the drawing board. Will sow more on the next good leaf day.

I kinda deduced that chives were more suited for leaf days as I want the leafy bits, while I wasn’t too sure about spring onions because of the slightly white bulby part. Thanks again Charles for clarifying that.

I sowed 2 batches of chives in 9th Feb (root day) and 19th March (leaf day) .However, the chives that were sown in Feb, their tips started turning beige/light brown and was kinda dying off. I quickly planted them out last week just to try to salvage them. I am not too sure if I have overwatered them.

Will try Suella´s method too as I have heaps of onion sets leftover.

I have also heard about this Egyptian Walking Onion which is a perennial. Have ordered a plant just to see how it works.

[SuellaParticipant]

I’ll try to combine shallots and onion sets in one big pot and then plant another a fortnight later. I suspect
that each type may grow differently. I have enough left over to do several pots

If I trim them quite high up I suspect the growing points may continue to grow for some little time.

Would it be best then to plant them out in the flower garden to see if any recover enough to set seed?

I have all of one Babbington’s Leek, but some walking onions that I exchanged for some well rotted horse muck. I’ve not yet used them but am growing them as a a novelty currently. Maybe this year.

And I bought literally two dozen Elephant “Garlic” for a pound when our garden centre had a sale. 10 for a pack of 2 rather than £2.99. I cleared them out. I’ll grow some of these for food and the rest in my flower bed. as they sound like they will be growing big seed heads.
I’m still getting my head around biodynamic sowing, so am likely to do it wrongly at first.

[charlesModerator]

Just to clarify “biodynamic sowing”, the term is misleading… Biodynamic farming and gardening developed only sine 1924, when Rudolf Steiner gave his first lectures.
Farmers and gardeners had been sowing and planting by the moon for millennia before that. Steiner suggested following and investigating those practices.
Then Maria Thun did her research and started publishing her calendars, combining b.d and working with aspects of moon phases and relationships.
So if one says “biodynamic sowing”, its about the Thun’s mainly.
But there is a much bigger field of gardening and farming by the moon which is separate to biodynamics.

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