Thursday 13 July 2017

This onion is made for walking

My family talk about all weird and wonderful things.  Most of all we talk about growing vegetables.  Being able to grow as much as you can at home with little input is my type of gardening.

Whilst drinking my millionth cup of tea of the day, a little bit dozy as I am emotionally tired, bordering on exhaustion at one point, my ears heard something I hadnt heard of before...

{Egyptian onions}.  My cousin and my aunt are fierce vegetable gardeners, both have had 6 children.  My aunt has 28 grandchildren and has started on great grandchildren like my mum.  (My mum has 8 already.)  Family dinners take a lot of food.  The more you can grow, the less you have to buy.  My cousin said she thought that there would be lots of free onions next year.

Now I did dredge my mind and I am sure I had read about them before but by the name walking onion.  Its called this as it spreads like crazy, but if there are lots of mouths to feed I think this would be an excellent plant to have in the garden.

My questions to you are

Do you have Egyptian onions?

Do you eat the raw as well as cooked?

Is the flavour milder than brown onions?

How many do you think are equal to one brown onion?

I am thinking I will just have one massive bed of this and let it go at its own pace.  Weeding must be easier as they are already a set and not a seedling that you could accidentally weed out thinking it is a bit of grass.  (yes I have done that before, doh!)

What are your thought?  Hit or Miss on Egyptian onions?

p.s. my dad was sat up in the bed yesterday, progress!

4 comments:

local alien said...

Glad to hear your Dad is progressing. All the best.

Love to hear about those onions. Never heard of Egyptian onions.

Billy Blue Eyes said...

Not sure vegetable gardening is cost effective for that number of kids though the benefits are. The onions are just going to seed like the normal onions you grow in your garden but in a crazy way from the look. Not sure I'd want to grow them here in the UK we have enough problems with other plants that take over

Raybeard said...

Had no idea there was such a thing as 'Egyptian' onions - as being something special, I mean.
For most of my life I could never eat raw onions as they felt like they caught in my throat and lingered for hours afterwards. Fried onions, fine. But recently I've started slicing up some raw ones thinly and putting them in a cheese sandwich, and it's not so bad now. Scrumptious, in fact.

Sol said...

Hey Linda, it could be easier than growing from seed although the onion is smaller than a brown one.

Hey Bill, the onions are a hybrid of a normal onion and a welsh onion (that is like a big spring onion or chive), but as they dont grow very big they arent worth it to some people. So it isnt an invading species like knot weed.

Not quite sure what benefit they get. I am the only person not uni educated in my family. Everyone else is a Dr, or a dentist, or a solicitor, an engineer, or a pharmacist, a publisher or they work in wealth management etc everybody works, so I doubt they qualify for anything as they will be above the threshold for it.

Hey Ray, if you get onions that have too much bite, slice them and put them in water for 15 minutes drain and use as normal the tang will have been taken down. the special thing about this onion is it grows a 'set' at the top rather than a seed. it normally takes 2 years to get a seed to an onion to eat, this is a one year life cycle so it quicker but the product is a little smaller. I like any gardening that means less work for me. :)