EGYPTIAN WALKING ONIONS | How to Use Them | PERENNIAL Food Source

hi friends I'm Sheri and today we're going to be talking about Egyptian walking onions we're going to talk about how to use them how to store them and how to propagate them let's take a quick minute to talk about why they're called Egyptian walking onions or as some people have said they just call them walking onions the reason for that is the onions actually grow this onion set at the tops of them and they get so heavy that they fall over and they actually take root into the ground which starts another Egyptian walking onion so then the Egyptian walking onion grows up like these ones again and again falls down takes root and builds another Egyptian walking onion hence the name walking onions this was my very first Egyptian walking onion patch I have pulled a lot of them out since then and replanted but look at the jumble of meth that's going on in here foreign the little bulb sets they grow so many onions and so what I wanted to show you specifically are these two right here so they have fallen over and they are now sitting on the dirt and so I haven't lifted them up to see whether or not they've actually taken root okay so they have just fallen over but I guarantee you that if I come back here in a week that they will have taken root into the ground and that will be a new Egyptian walking onion patch for next season let's talk a little bit about the bulb you'll see here that I've pulled three of them and all three of them are slightly different sizes that could just be the amount of sun water whatever they're getting to actually grow to the size that they're growing now keeping in mind that I give these onions zero TLC and I'm not saying I give them zero TLC and then I water them or uh fertilize them I do nothing nothing I can't stress enough how much or how little I do for these onions and how well they grow so when I'm out here watering all of my annuals and I'm worrying about you know do they have enough water I don't want them to wilt up I'm not even thinking about these onions I never fertilize and I never water they get whatever nature wants to give them and that's it that's the other amazing thing about this onion is it is maintenance free you do nothing and it produces so these onion bulbs at the end like I said are usable like you would a regular onion my family will run out here they will pull the onion out for me and I will use it in whatever I'm cooking that night for dinner keeping in mind that this is a perennial onion and so once you pull the entire stock like I've done today that onion will no longer grow where this onion was in order to grow that perennial onion for next year you need to take one of these little onion sets and throw it in the hole it's as simple as that throw it in the hole that's all you have to do and again I don't check on it I don't think to myself that's a small onion it's just starting I better give it some TLC I just throw it in the hole and go about my business with my garden so some people have asked whether or not you can store these onions I haven't stored them over Winter um and the reason for that is I do have space in my garden to grow my Spanish onions my red onions onions that I store over winter now I will tell you that I have dried these before and I've kept them in my fridge and used them for up to about a month but I don't normally have enough of them left over to see how long they would store so that would be a really good experiment to try out to see how long these onions can store I pulled roughly a hundred of these Egyptian walking onions out of the garden last year I did replace them as you can see behind me they're growing so I've obviously replaced them but I pulled roughly a hundred of these out of the garden clean them up put them through my food processor on the slicing option and then I used my FoodSaver which is a system that removes the aerative plastic bags that they provide you and I was able to put roughly 10 pounds of sliced onions in my freezer it was amazing so throughout the winter months if we wanted to do a stir fry I would grab one of those bags it was roughly a pound of onions if I wanted to make a soup or a broth or whatever I was doing I would pull it one of those bags or already sliced all I had to do was let them thaw out or throw them in the pan and put the lid on on low and let them thaw easily like that they're amazing so let's talk about the ends of them now so it's quite interesting because these onions if you just look at them behind me they're a little bit wild right now but when they start growing these little bulbs at the top they look a lot like a year two onion and every June when my mother-in-law comes here um I mean she visits more than that but every June they drive down to Nova Scotia so they come here as you know to have dinner as their goodbye for the summer and every year she walks around my garden to see what I'm growing and always comes back and says your onions do you want me to break those those flowers off the seeds and I'm like no those are my Egyptian walking onions because they look very similar to that so this year I have a four by eight no a three by eight bed raised bed that I want to plant my Egyptian walking onions in for those of you that know um that have been following along with my channel you know that I'm moving and I'm gonna be leaving the new buyers all of these onions and so I need to make sure that I start a patch at my new place so I am going to be planting all of these little ends so that is one way to use these and I'm going to show you that later on in the video I'm going to take you to the property and we're going to plant 200 of these little bulbs pull them and then I'll pull them out when I'm making the salad I'll cut I'll throw them on the salad everybody raise about the Pickled Egyptian walking onions they're so good another thing that I've done with them because there are so many here that you can only give so many away I am screaming from the rooftops how amazing these onions are and I've been giving them away every year to friends and family but I always end up with hundreds of them so sometimes what I'll do is I will take the larger ones and I will remove that onion paper that's on them throw them in a Ziploc bag and then when I am cooking throughout the season the winter season and I need onions I'll pull them out mentioned I am going to be planting roughly 200 of these so we need to get started and start pulling them off before the rain comes but I want to show you quickly how easy it is to harvest these little onion sets so basically I'm going to go around and I am just going to break them off it's that easy this one onion set that I just pulled off there are six Egyptian walking onions on here so I pulled one and I got six just like that one thing that I want to mention though about these little onion sets is that if you know you're going to be replanting them don't pull them off two weeks ahead of time because you have time you want to make sure that you are pulling them off within a couple days of actually planting them they are not like those onion sets that you buy at the store in April that are in the mesh bag and they're all dried out and they look like little tiny onions these are not like that if you plant these after they have all dried out you will not get an Egyptian walking onion they it only works if you plant them when they're fresh so I'm gonna pull them today we're gonna walk around together we're gonna pull off 200 of them and then we're gonna head over to the property [Music] hey guys so we're at the property now and we're ready to plant all of these Egyptian walking onions into this bed but I wanted to show you how big some of them actually get and so this here came off of one onion so there is four here and so just to show you how you break it apart they are in there tight so there's one there so I would just plant that like I would a normal onion so they're kind of pretty too with the the purpley red color that's on them and so look at this like this is already starting to grow the onion and so I'm gonna plant it so that the greenery is showing out of the dirt and it is going to be really fun to see how many I plant how many grow next year and just the progress of this bed [Music] foreign [Music] as I mentioned earlier this bed is eight by three I figured I'd be able to get close to 200 of them planted I was able to get 180 but as you know when you plant one you get many so I may have planted 180 but I just planted a years not a year a lifetime's worth of onions so all of those onions that I picked earlier I still have a ton left in the basket and I barely made a dent on the ones that I took them from so keep a watch for my garden tours because this may not look like very much right now but in a matter of a week to two weeks this bed is going to be thriving if you don't have Egyptian walking onions in your garden get them find them plant them thanks for spending time with me

Channel: Gardening in the North

Views: 26,575

Keywords: EGYPTIAN WALKING ONIONS | Perennial Food Source, Egyptian Walking Onions, Walking onions, Tree onions, Green onions, Perennial onions, Gardening in the north, Gardening, Garden, Planting onions, Propagating onions, How to grow perennials, How to grow perennial onions, Growing perennial onions, Homesteading, Pickled onions, Bar pickled onions, Raised bed gardening, Easy to grow perennial walking onion, How to grow Egyptian Walking Onions, How to use Egyptian Walking Onions

Id: dTcLqG_LYag

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023