Over the past month, all across the internet, I have come across posts of people growing their spring onion roots in glasses of water.
It seemed a sensible frugal step to take, particularly when we were trying to shop less often and be careful with spending.
I have mine growing and yearn to thrown them into the compost but can't quite let go of the mentality that made me do it in the first place.
The green of the spring onion seems quite slimy inside and I don't think they have the same depth of flavour.
Your thoughts?

I've grown them successfully by planting the roots straight into potted soil. It's very satisfying to see them turn into spring onions again. I do it with those rooted salad greens and herbs as well.My coriander grows all year outside with a teepee plastic bag over it

I have continual patches of spring onions in the vegetable garden. This originally came about by accident several years ago when I didn't use all the spring onions I'd planted in my garden over summer and they just stayed there over the winter months. I found that they multiplied by growing off-shoots and it was easy enough just to pull the young off-shoot up from the original spring onion plant leaving the original plant there to send up more off-shoots.

The other thing that happened was that when they went to seed, I just let nature take its course and eventually the seed heads dropped and I had patches of new spring onions coming up. Consequently I never have the need to buy or plant spring onions which is great. I've attached a couple of photographs taken today. They do look scraggly and there are old leaves which could be pulled off, but there's plenty of nice new spring onions there for the taking.
Regards,
Dawn.

I hadn't seen this until now but abour an hour ago I came back from the supermarket with some spring onions.
Usually, I use some of them and plant the rest in the garden, chopping the green tops as much as I need. They seem to last for ages
Yesterday I pulled out the last of what was in the garden as they were looking a bit manky. I never thought to just let them multiply.

I will also plant some 'chives' that I had bought from the supermarket a few days ago. My chives turned out to be leeks...baby ones, ready for planting. I had been looking for some potted chives and saw what I thought was chives as we were waiting in a queue and just reached over and picked them up.

I've done it and it's a nah from me. I grow quite a big crop of spring onions in my garden anyway. Like Dawn, my leftovers went to seed and distributed themselves. I've got a ton of self sown parsley and dill (all over the property, follows the route of the wheelbarrow to the fire pile!). I've got 2 nice straight garden beds with orderly rows of veges, then 3 others that are a "cottage garden" style, we'll call it... aka, stuff all over the place.

When some heads have gone to seed, I cut them off and shake them into a paper bag and collect the seed for sowing myself. I try to do this for as many varieties of veges as I can. I love growing veges from seed, I find it immensely satisfying.

The price of spring onions twists my knickers. $2.99 for 4 spring onions? It's not like they take up a lot of space, nor are they hard to grow.

Yes, we now let some of our lettuces, coriander and basil go to seed (have done it with parsley for years), to get a perpetuating cycle of them. We keep seeds of other things too and sow them - those long red chillies you can buy in the supermarket produce section are so easy to grow from seed and one plant yields handfuls of them (freeze as is). I've done a similar thing with leeks as what Dawn's done with her spring onions (remove little baby offshoots and replant them to grow into new adult plants). Has anyone let silverbeet go to seed and got young plants that way? Haven't done that yet but thinking of it....

I wonder if the lack of flavour is from growing them in water? I never think hydroponically-grown veges have a lot of flavour.

J1 I do the same with lettuce and coriander, but basil I've had no luck, or maybe I didn't know they were baby basil? Glad you mentioned leeks, I meant to mention that I let one or two leeks go to seed and when the seed head is well and truly formed I leave it on the plant but give it a good bend down so that it drops it's seeds in one place when they are ready and they grow as seedlings. If you look closely at my first picture above you will see on the bottom right hand side (amongst the weeds) a cluster of green shoots are leeks, not spring onions. I'm about to separate them and plant them out.

Jenna, I've got heaps of parsley too and same with dill - it comes up like a weed but lovely to have for a fish dish and easily controlled by pulling out or digging in. I too am happy to come across self sown veges and herbs in the garden.
Regards,
Dawn.

Oh great I will plant my spring onions tomorrow. So much happier with them in the garden than on the bench in water.
I have a coriander garden that just goes on year after year. When they go to seed I let them dry off and seeds disperse, or give them a good shake and off they go again. I have coriander for probably 10 months of the year.
Rocket is a bit the same, I have left it to self sow and have most of a raised garden bed full of it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2020 10:53AM by helen.