Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today I have another exciting episode for you coming from the backyard garden and what
we have here is my raised bed and it's a perennial raised bed.
So, these are some plants that I really don't have to plant or replant every year.
They keep coming back on their own, whether you live in the dessert with 114 degree days
and it gets down to almost snowing and maybe even snows once in the winter for a day if
that, but it gets pretty cold here, but these guys will grow above the ground all winter
long in Las Vegas and many other, you know, mild climates, but that being said, this is
a perennial crop anywhere pretty much in the US from zone 3 to zone 9.
So, what this means, yes, even if you live in Wisconsin, you can grow these guys and
these guys are perennial.
What does that means?
That means you guys plant these just once and then they're going to grow for you and
they're going to make some onions for you and what these are called perennial onions,
also known as tree onions or top set onions or Egyptian walking onions.
Remember, 'walk like a Egyptian.'
My arms are all messed up so I can't do it perfectly, but in any case, what these guys
are is they make a wealth of food for you guys to eat and let me go ahead and explain
the different kinds of food and explain why they are called tree or walking onions.
First thing is they're called tree onions 'cause they're quite tall.
This is almost pushing 3 feet here, and if we let this grow these will actually grow
what's called a top set.
So, these guys on the tops of them actually produce little onion-like bulbs.
You could actually use these as like shallots in your cooking, but even more valuable to
me, instead of using those to eat, is actually you can replant these guys, and look, they're
sprouting back up.
So, if I let this grow, if I grow a whole nother segment up here, it'd just even get
taller.
So, that's totally amazing.
Now, they're called walking onions because what happens is at the end of the season,
they'll actually bud, shoot up, and what happens is they fall over.
As you guys can see, here's some falling over onto the ground here, and what would normally
happen is if this was like, you know good ground to grow in, these onions would actually
start, set root, and then actually come up.
So, literally what they're going to is grow, fall, plant themselves, grow, fall, plant
themselves, and literally walk across your yard, you know.
They're not super invasive, 'cause you can take care of them and handle before they get
out of control, not like something that really, you know, take over, so don't be too concerned.
None of them have actually come up on their own for me, so that's definitely a good things.
I want to show you guys, harvesting these guys, probably about the end of summer.
So, these guys are ready to be harvested, so what we're going to do is basically take
a container here and basically break off the tops and break off these onions and once again
you can eat these guys or actually you can use them for seed stocks to reuse them for
next year, and besides the tops you can use for shallots, what's also edible on the plant
are 2 more things, and that's why I like this plant, man, because you literally plant is
once and you literally have onions all year long.
If you live where it snows, you know, what can happen is after a frost, you know, a few
of these guys aren't going to make it, but the bulbs underneath the ground are going
to stay alive and then right as it thaws out first thing in the springtime, they're going
to actually shoot up right out the ground and start making more onions for you.
Now, when they shoot out pup the ground, they're going to look like this 'cause I let this
crop grown and they basically made it, went to seed, and then came back.
So, check it out.
Here's some new plants.
We're going to go ahead and trim this whole bed out of the mature crop, but we're going
to leave the new plants, but check it out.
What does that look like?
These looks like little onion chives, and let me tell you, I can smell them and they
smell like onion chives, too.
So, you can actually just pick and eat the little chives.
I would encourage you guys to just pick the little small ones like that.
The smaller they are, the, you now, lighter they'll be, not as hot and spicy or whatever,
or pungent maybe.
Man, that's a nice green onion flavor, in a perennial.
So, now we're going to go ahead and harvest and onion bulbs and see what they look like,
'cause I've never done this before.
We're just going to go down the stalk of one of the ones form last year, and we're going
to carefully try to dig it up and pull it up and see what's going on.
There we go.
There's a little onion bulb you can eat.
These guys don't get super big, but nonetheless, definitely an onion you can eat and enjoy.
So, that's why I like these onions.
I mean, it's so useful.
You've the got three different ones.
The bulb underneath the ground, you got the top sets, the chives, all in one.
Now, this is not a sweet onion by any means, so you might like onions and then maybe won't
like these.
So, next what I'm going to do is I'm going to harvest all the different top sets.
Alright, so I'm finishing up harvesting my top sets.
Check it out, I've got a nice little container full of top sets.
Now, you know, I started these top sets through top sets that were given to me by a fellow
gardener in Las Vegas, so this episode is dedicated to him.
It's Gene, and if you want to check the video, check the video down below.
It's basically growing if you rent, growing in your backyard garden if you rent.
He did and amazing job.
This episode is dedicated to Gene.
Now I'm able to pass along these walking onions to you guys.
If you're interested in purchasing some of these walking onions that you guys can grow
these very walking onions in your garden, once again, please check the link below to,
you know, purchase some so you guys can plant these perennial walking onions.
Once again, zone 3 to 9.
These guys are originally from Canada, eh?
Not even from Egypt.
Alright, so I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time and remember; keep on growing.
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today I have another exciting episode for you.
So, this is a fun one at that.
As you guys can see I'm still recovering from my broken arm