Spring Onions: Grow from Seed

Spring onions are simply easy to grow and a staple for so many meals you may put on the table.  You can’t go wrong and odds are high you’ll be wishing you planted more.

That’s how I felt at least, when I harvested my first plantings of spring onion. It was a gradual harvest, just picking when I needed it, and it extended over months!  I loved it so much I’m now enjoying my second crop heading into winter.

Think of them as giant chives or small white onions, they taste delicious and just pick them when you need them!  Depending on the growth cycle they will be dainty delights or fleshy bulbs with lots of crunch.

If you want to make the most of your spring onions (and don’t have a massive planting of them) instead of pulling them out by the roots when you want to just use them for a garnish, try snipping the stem approx 1cm above the soil. This way, you take the most of the spring onion and leave the root structure in place — that will regenerate into a young plant again. Clever eh!

• Germination period: 10-14 days, harvest 10 weeks
• Planted: undercover in greenhouse then transferred into vege patch
• Hit-rate: At a guess, 100% strike rate!

My learnings:

• Spring onion seeds look identical to brown onion and chive seeds.  Be sure to note what you’ve planted so you have manageable expectations on how fast they will grow, and what they will become!

• I first grew spring onions seedlings in the greenhouse until they were robust and approx 10 cm tall before planting in the garden. This worked exceptionally well, although time consuming when transplanting (as you need to make a little pencil hole in the soil, plant, pat down/around etc) and ensure there’s  a good 2cm spacing between. The alternative way is to plant the seeds directly in the soil you want to grow. As the seedlings grow, you are advised to thin them by plucking out the smaller plants so they eventually are 2cm apart. I had a failed onion planting this way unfortunately (the seeds didn’t make it to seedling status, probably because the soil was too heavy for them) so I opted for the slow but more guaranteed transplanting method!

• Spring onions have shallow roots and don’t need a lot of soil to grow. We have a raised garden (our back section is on a slope) so these little beauties are growing well at the shallow end.

• Unlike brown onions, there isn’t a magical time to harvest spring onions. They are ‘ready when they are ready’ and you can leave them in the soil until you need them. At worst, they may go to flower (and then you can harvest the seeds for next time).