How do I know when my scallions are mature enough to harvest?

Taste is your best guide for harvesting scallions. Most people prefer scallions mild since they are added raw to salads, spreads, and sauces, or added in the last few minutes of cooking to stir-fries, soups, sauces, sautes, and stews. You be the judge if your scallions are tasty mild. I suggest that you pull a scallion or two from your crop and give them a bite. A scallion ready for harvest will have a white root end the same diameter as the green stem or leaves directly above; the scallion never develops a bulb. While onions can be left in the ground until their leaves begin to brown and fall over--a sign of a tasty bulb onion, that's not the case with the scallion. Scallions are a bit like green onions; they are harvested while the leaves are still erect, green and succulent.

I have green onions with 2.5" bulbs. I want to eat but also want to reproduce them. How do I harvest but keep the growing cycle?

If you want to eat the onions green--just trim the grassy tops a quarter or half inch on a cut-and-come-again basis, but don't trim more than 1/3 of the leafy top to allow the plant to grow on. Add the green onions to salads or potatoes as a seasoning. You can use the small bulbs as salad onions at their present size or you can allow the plants to grow to maturity, flower, and set seed. Collect the seed to sow a new crop next year.

Onion seed can produce scallions, large bulbs, sets, or bolting plants--it just depends on the time of year. Planting onion seed in spring you can sow 5 seeds per inch. When they begin to grow you can make your use and harvest choice: to produce large keepers, thin the plants to 3 inches apart. For green onions or little boiling onions, thin the plants to 1/2 to 1 inch apart--then let them grow up to the desired size and harvest. Allow some of the plants to flower and go to seed to collect seed.

Onions sets are produced by sowing onion seed very thickly. Sets started from seed are often used the next year to quick start a new crop. Seeds sown close together and not thinned will produce stunted plants and very small bulbs. These small bulbs are lifted, placed in a paper bag in a cool, dry place and then set out to grow into mature bulbs the following year.

Check the variety of onion you are growing. If you have a green onion variety--also known as scallions, spring onions, or bunching onions--these will never reach large keeper size.

Thank you so much for clarifying the difference among the 3 different type of onions of this family. one question that still plagues me - with the spring onion, if for example, i'm preparing a stir-fry, do i cook both the green shoots and the white bulb? Thank you!

Hi Matt: If you stri-fry the spring onion--bulb and green shoot together, you may find the cooking a bit uneven. The bulb will take slightly longer to cook than the thin tissued shoot. You might try slicing the bulb and shoot lengthwise if you want to cook them together as one. If you separate the bulb and shoot; add the bulb to the stir fry several seconds ahead of the shoot. For a stronger flavor add the spring onion near the end of the stir fry; cook a bit longer for a milder flavor.

My boyfriend insist there is a table onion so what is it?

What is a table onion? As you know, onions are used as a seasoning in almost all cuisines, usually in cooking. In many cuisines and cultures, onions also are appreciated as a vegetable and brought directly to the table--becoming table onions. Table onions commonly arrive at the table uncooked--sliced and added raw to salads and sandwiches and on their own as a vegetable or side dish. Onions vary in flavor from sweet to strong. Very sweet varieties include Vidalia, Granex, Walla Walla, and Maui; these are common table onions. Some of these are sweet enough to eat out of hand like an apple. Other table onions include green onions and spring onions--which sometimes are eaten raw as appetizers.

I want to order scallion bulbs. What do I look for?

When you shop for onion varieties to grow as scallions, you are looking for an onion variety or cultivar that has a long white shank; not all onions will fit this bill, but several onions have been bred for this tasty characteristic. (Scallions are cultivars of the bulbing onion Allium cepa.) Onions commonly grown as scallions are 'White Lisbon', also called 'Southport White', and another is 'Crystal Wax'. The cultivar 'Beltsville Bunching' is not a true scallion cultivar (it is a cross) but is often grown as a scallion. And there are several other cultivars commonly grown as scallions: 'Kincho Bunching', 'Tokyo Long White', 'Ishikura', 'Evergreen White Nabuka', 'White Sweet Spanish', 'Long White Summer Bunching', 'White Spear', 'Evergreen Hardy', and 'Deep Purple.'

I would like all info on vegetable gardening for onions, potatoes, collards, eggplant, red cayenne peppers, butter peas, beans (both snap and butter beans), peas, corn zipper peas, purple hull peas, silverqueen corn, okra, potatoes, squash, okra and I thnk this has been the best sight I have seen yet. Thank you so much. Sue Parker

You have quite a large garden growing Sue! Sounds like fun. You should find information on nearly all of the crops you have listed in the Category listings: just click on the crop you are interested in. And I will be writing about additional crops soon. Thanks for reading!

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