Onion Seed

Onion Flowers

Oh dear... this is probably not good!  Several of my onions have begun to send up flower stalks... usually when onions start to flower, it means they stop growing.  They theoretically only flower every 2 years, but periods of extreme cold and heat can convince them that several seasons have passed, and they'll send up stalks.  Carrots are biennial too, and we'll use this method (at 4 degrees Celsius) in my lab to get them to go to seed early.  Our weather has been rather odd here... a week of chilly rain and wind, a week of dry summer heat, and back again, so I can't really blame the onions.  You get one layer of onion for every leaf, and most of these onions are only up to 6-10 leaves, so there are probably no bulbs to speak of... and having a flower stalk in the center of the onion makes it unsuitable for storage because it'll easily rot.

The beast rises in destruction

I'm finding lots of conflicting information on the web about pearl onions specifically... wikipedia says that they're a form of "walking onion" that makes little onion bulbs where the flowers used to be, which get so heavy they fall over and re-plant themselves a foot away (hence the "walking").  Others say that pearl onions are just regular onions that are so young they haven't bulged out much yet.  There's an easy way to find out which is true for my particular pearls... just wait and see what happens.  Even if all I get out of these pearl onions is lovely flowers and tasty greens, it's more than worth the nearly nonexistent effort put into them. 

This bug waits too

On the positive side, growing pearl onions just for the delicious greens is extremely cost-effective!  I did get the pearl onions for free, but if I'd actually spent the money on them, by the end of the onions' lives I'd probably save about 3/4ths of the cost of buying that many organic green onions.  Plus, they're always as fresh as possible, with nothing left over to go bad in the fridge before I forget to use 'em.  I've been cutting off just the bottom leaves on the plants (and from the garlic plants too) as they bend from their weight, and then sticking them in everything... a very heavy dose in quiches, pizza, stir-fries, omelets, and even sprinkled festively on salads, mac & cheese, and steamed veggies.  I've been going a little crazy with the greens, but the hubby loves it.

Fresh pearl onion greens... they go with everything!

I've found that growing my own onions (90 plants hidden in crevices about the garden) is enhancing my culinary creativity, and is increasing the amount of organic green foods we eat daily.  Since green onions offer most of the same health benefits as mature onions, this is a good thing!

Wordless Wednesday: Happy Onions

Pearls of Oniony Wisdom

At work we had leftover slightly-sprouted red, white, and yellow pearl onions from an experiment about root tip mitosis.  Not one to waste sprouted plants, I took them home and tucked them into the earth wherever I could find space in between ornamental bushes.  18 made it into a pot, and the other 72 are in the ground.  Yeah, so maybe I got a little over-enthusiastic.  But hey, they say that onions and garlic keep insects away, and as you can see from the week's earlier posts, I can use all the help I can get!

 After 3 days, pearl onions reach toward the sun

Upon hearing that I had managed to plant 90 onions in the garden without taking up any prime planting real estate, my mother said, "You crack me up.  Sure do take after your grandpa."  I take that as a huge compliment... my grandfather is one part farmer, one part deep-sea fisherman, one part stubbornly self-sufficient, and 3 parts awesome.  Well, awesome except for that one time he fed me okra that he'd grown and pickled... eeeew, the dill-soaked slime!  Reminds me of, well, slugs.