Grow Never Ending Green Onions Year Round
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Seriously, you can have a never-ending supply of green onions. There are great windowsill onion methods. This works well when you don’t use a lot but like to have the green stems on hand. For my family, we don’t have enough window sills to hold all the onions we use. Here’s how you can have endless green onions at your fingertips!
I usually start with onion bulbs in the spring but you can use store-bought green onions as well. I know some people use them mainly for their green stem however, we use pretty much the entire thing and enjoy the onion bulb as well.
When you’re ready to use your onion, trim the bulb just above the root end. Or higher, depending on your preference. Basically, you need to the tip intact to hold the roots together. My husband picks them fresh from outside daily and then leaves the root ends in a little bowl of water for me to re-plant later.
TIP: If you are using onions from your own garden, you can lift the onion just a little, without pulling it from the dirt, to give yourself an area to cut it and leave the roots and the tip in the dirt. Just cover with dirt and it will re-grow.
If you’re using store-bought onions you may not have the roots so you need to let them sit in just a little bit of water until their roots grow a bit. Careful you don’t use too much water as they can rot. You also need to change the water if they are in there for several days.
I think they look like little aliens. They remind me of one of those Tom Cruise end of the world movies. In the spring and summer, I spend most evenings outside tinkering in the garden for a couple of hours so this is when I typically take the bowl of aliens outside with me to replant. It is actually super simple and you don’t need a lot of dirt.
You don’t need a garden. This will work great on a deck or apartment patio as long as you get some sun, you could use Rail Planters on a railing. I use flat crates that I was gifted for free from my ‘Buy Nothing Community’ and I also have pots that sit on the railing of my deck as well. You can even pop them in a flower pot or in between other plants as a filler as long as they still have access to the sun. I love getting surprised when an onion stem pops up somewhere unexpected!
Start by making a shallow dip in your soil. Basically, you just pop the onion with the root pointing down into the dirt and cover lightly. Make sure you water and it will grow!
Obviously, the weather in your area will make a difference. A greenhouse would be great but not realistic for everyone. I live in the Pacific Northwest so we don’t get a lot of snow or freezing but we get very little sunshine in the fall/winter so they don’t grow as well during this time of the year. The nice thing is, that because they don’t freeze, they remain dormant and pop up in the spring when the sun comes back. I will admit that I’m less active during the fall/winter months but I definitely keep an ongoing supply all summer long. Until I don’t want to go outside anymore.
Remember the more of the onion bulb you cut off, the longer it needs to stay in the ground. You can tell when your green stem is getting long and your bulb is peeking out of the top of the dirt. I’ve accidentally pulled some out to find they were too small. I just pop them back in the dirt and cover up the bulb. They will root very easily. You can also cut off the green stems and leave the onion in the dirt, the greens will grow back multiple times to use over and over again.
I hope you try this! I would love to hear if you try this out and how it works for you. I can’t tell you how nice it is to just walk outside and pick dinner ingredients right out of the dirt.
