Easy way to grow Spring Onions

A few months ago, I wrote about an easy way to grow spring onions (also called scallions, salad onions or 葱).  Anyhow, a family member who lives in Sydney, Australia read the post and decided to try it out, resulting in great success and these fantastically lush green leaves.  What can I say?  These spring onions grown out of a container in Australia turned out even better than ours did in the UK. 

The method we used is basically to reserve the roots from your next batch of store bought spring onions, and replant them.

Method

1. Cut off the roots of the spring onions as you normally would, but leave an approximate 3cm root end

2. Bury the root ends back into some soil with the white portion slightly sticking out (either in the ground or into a container)

3. Wait a few days and you will see it develop a new shoot

4. A few weeks later, you should be able to harvest new spring onion tips! 

A replanted root starting to sprout

One of the best things about growing your own vegetables is that you get to see them from a whole new perspective, when they are at the different stages of their lifecycle. Who would ever have thought that spring onions could produce such pretty flowers?

(L) Spring Onions flowering in December (R) Pretty Spring Onion flowers

If you don't harvest the leaves regularly, they will eventually grow a tip which turns into these dainty little white snowdrop like flowers.  You can actually eat the flowers as well, they have a milder flavour and taste a little like chives.  Great for sprinkling into salads or using as a garnish!

Spring Onions are an absolute essential part of Chinese and South East Asian cuisine, and I just love being able to harvest them from the garden to go straight into my cooking!  Try it and let us know how you go!