My favorite bunching onions are early cropping spring varieties, growing these easily-maintained crops couldn’t be simpler. By their very nature, bunching onions require minimal care: even if neglected for any length of time they’ll simply return next season with even larger crops. Here is a beginner’s guide to growing bunching onions.
Slug-resistant vegetables benefit greatly from companion plants like lettuce. Also, as their roots reach deeper into the soil than most leaf crops do, these crops make great ways to divide rows of other veg and divide rows of other leaf crops too.
What Are Bunching Onions?
Before leaping to a beginner’s guide to growing bunching onions, discover what are bunching onions. Bunching onions are one of the toughest vegetables to cultivate and one of the few perennial crops you can reap year after year from your garden. There’s often some confusion around exactly why bunching onions are known by this name, leading to much speculation as to their identity. This often confuses why exactly these are known by that name (aka: ‘bunching”).
All bulbs, especially onions, tend to form clusters as part of their natural growth cycle; roots from one bulb often root into others within its papery wrapper until each is mature enough to send forth its shoots and roots.
Bunching onions differ only slightly in that they avoid papery casing and produce shoots as soon as the plant is ready to multiply. We mimic this process through multi-sowing (which I will discuss later), as this provides higher yield from crops that don’t mind being restricted; in reality, though, their natural tendency is for one onion at a time to develop, then bunch by itself the following year.
Are Bunching Onions The Same Thing As Green Onions?
A beginner’s guide to growing bunching onions can also be used for spring onions, green onions, welsh onions, Japanese bunching onions, and scallions since (you guessed it!) they all share similar properties. Originating in China but now found worldwide through breeding programs, all having shared an identical basic DNA (allowing cross-pollination between varieties through hard work). Imagine crossing-pollinating two of them for an amazing result that combines red scallion flavor with a bite of spring onion!).
As with planting any other crop, when sowing onions you must leave enough space between varieties – spring onions can be harvested as early as 8 weeks post-sowing, while tall green onions take 4 months from sowing until harvest time.
Will Bunching Onions Form Bulbs?
Bunching onions, like their bulbing counterparts (onions, leeks, and chives), are alliums; their unique habit of bunching up around central plants to save energy means that unlike their bulbing relatives (white onion), their bulbs do not form. Instead, their bases often remain round yet bulbous for easy harvesting rather than splitting off into separate base bulbs as white onions would.
They differ from regular white onions by growing on the base of their stem instead of producing an outer bulb, similar to how new tulips grow from one single base plate without an outer case. We typically don’t eat tough stems from bulbing onions but the hollow leaves of bunching onions make wonderful salad crops when harvested separately and eaten raw after separation from their bulb after harvesting.
Long-Day, Intermediate and Short-Day Onions Explained
Are Bunching Onions Perennial, Invasive, or Do They Multiply?
If you are looking for a beginner’s guide to growing bunching onions, it is important to know their type too. Bunching onions are perennial crops; one sowing may provide crops for years and years after its original sowing; however, individual plants reproduce by budding. Eventually, though, this means the original will eventually give way to its offspring and be taken over entirely by them.
Though they will spread, any gardener with more than 10 minutes per year to spare can effectively control these plants because they spread very slowly, are unlikely to germinate from seed without our input, and can easily be kept under control with regular care and management.
Tip: If your sweetcorn plants become overrun by wild grasses and vines, just dig up and consume. Even during the dead of winter, the entire plant can be eaten; while its tougher edges might prove tough to chew on whole, when chopped up it makes an amazing taste of spring that brings some much-needed warmth in January/February!
A Beginner’s Guide To Growing Bunching Onions
Here is a beginner’s guide to growing bunching onions for you:
How to Start from Seed?
Seeds have always fascinated me and the tiny black bunching onion seeds I recently purchased are gorgeous miniature gems; their sharp angular edges contrast beautifully against a sleek satin casing for maximum aesthetic impact and sowing them is child’s play. But there are also incredible natural tricks at work here which makes bunching onion sowing easier than ever.
As their surface area is so angular, angular seeds are extremely easy to manage despite their diminutive size. Furthermore, these seeds do not exhibit any preferences regarding up or down positioning, shallow depth of planting depth, etc. Instead germinating whenever safe from frost conditions.
To sow from seed, wait 5-6 weeks before the last frost and fill a 9cm pot with any compost (they don’t care too much!), dimple a 1-inch hole using your fingernail, drop 8-10 seeds into it and fill the hole up using water alone (it will do all of its jobs filling it for you!) Leave them out in direct sunlight on windowsills until sprouting occurs; overwatering them is almost certain to doom them.
Tip: An experiment you could try when growing with children would be to begin them in a glass with seeds sown against it so you can watch their seeds germinate and sprout from side-sown seeds, much as was done previously with beans; onions grow differently though: sprouting sideways before splitting root-and-stem systems to form elbows underground before forcing its way upward and popping out the soil surface as shoots of growth pop above it all.
Transplanting Bunching Onions: When, How & How Deep to Plant
Bunching onions of all varieties are straightforward crops to plant as long as your soil remains relatively loose and free-draining. As part of crop rotation or as an addition, crushed eggshells added on top can aid root development while providing replenishing nutrients during their seasonal period.
As soon as the last frost has subsided in spring, transplant onions into your garden by burying them slightly below soil level. Bunching onions work similarly but planting deeper may provide better protection from birds that mistake them for tasty greenworms.
Give yourself 3-4 inches between rows so that there is ample room to use a hoe between lines of onions. As bunching onions tend to be ineffective ground cover plants, leaving space is essential. Leaving any less will almost certainly result in some form of weed germination between your plants and thus hoeing is inevitable!
How Long Until Harvest?
Bunching onions should be planted early each spring, beginning sowing at the beginning of April until midsummer and finally transplanted one month after sowing in your garden. Small varieties will usually be ready four weeks post-planting; larger bunching onions usually reach maturity 8-9 weeks from sowing.
As an estimate, sowing in February and planting out in April should yield harvestable results between June and September depending on your variety.
Tip: If, like me, you experiment with leaving perennial crops such as daffodils to bloom over winter and you are lucky enough to experience mild conditions, you could start harvesting these tasty blooms as early as spring if winter has been mild enough. Imagine the delight in finding yourself picking fresh produce while pottering around in your garden!
How To Harvest Bunching Onions?
Harvest bunching onions without much difficulty; simply pull them from the soil while leaving at least one onion behind as this will provide next year’s crop!
If you practice crop rotation, once harvest is completed lift out all onions from their respective beds and transfer some to new beds. Each onion will grow into its cluster the following season without needing any special care over winter, almost all varieties are frost-hardy!
Bunching Onions Companion Plants
Bunching onions make excellent companion plants for carrots, and allium plants in general, as the smell dissuades carrot flies from landing on them. Alliums also tend not to attract slugs as much; creating an onion wall around salad leaves may supposedly deter these predatory creatures (though I’ve had no such luck myself!).
Though bunching onions doesn’t require much in terms of companion plants, planting them among rows of other veg or herbs, such as lettuces or lemon balm will save both time and effort by keeping weeds down. Their roots grow at different depths than salad greens which helps minimize any unnecessary soil disturbance by their presence.
Or try cultivating them among rows of chamomile or winter savory for maximum effect. Their flavors won’t be altered at all, rather growing chamomile nearby helps boost essential oil levels in any other plant, which enhances their taste (this also works for cabbages and herbs).
Leeks can also make for great additions near allium crops as they act to deter onion fly, which has larvae capable of completely ruining allium harvests.
Care For Bunching Onions
Conclusion
Without question, the prize for the easiest plant to cultivate goes to the simple bunching onion with all of its confounding history, captivating lifespan, and unfussy habits.
As any beginner gardener can appreciate a beginner’s guide to growing bunching onions should have provided helpful insights, not least in dispelling some confusion over exactly what a bunching onion is!