Growing green onions in a container is easy, doesn’t require much room, and can be grown year-round. In today’s post and video, we’ll cover what you need to know to grow green onions in a container successfully!
WHAT ARE GREEN ONIONS?
Green onions are immature onions with green stems or shoots. The green shoots or stems form and grow before the bulb forms. Stems or shoots continue to form and grow as the bulb enlarges. In green onions, you harvest the green stems before the bulb forms.
REGROWING ONIONS FROM SCRAPS
We do our best to utilize everything we can, which includes kitchen scraps. When we buy green onions we buy organic and we use all of the green stem and only a small portion of the wite when a recipe allows for it. That’s because we replant the white portion that has the roots.
WHEN TO PLANT GREEN ONIONS
You can plant green onions any time of the year because you’re not trying to get a large bulb to form. If you live in a location that gets really hot like we do be sure to place the pot in an area that is slightly shaded.
CHOOSING A POT
We like to use large galvanized pots to grow lots of things in our garden, including green onions but just about any pot will do. Green onions don’t need a deep pot and the width or diameter of the post will be determined by how many onions you plan to plant.
SOIL FOR GROWING GREEN ONIONS
As with all of our container plants, I like to use an organic mix but most soils for potted plants will do fine as long as it is a well-draining soil. Onions do like rich nourishing soil so adding in some compost is never a bad idea.
HOW TO PLANT GREEN ONIONS IN A CONTAINER
Planting green onions is as simple as poking a shallow hole into the soil. I usually use my finger and go down about 1″. Place the root section of the bulb down into the hole and bring back against the plant. Move over about 1.5″ or so and plant the next one. Lightly water and place in a location that will get sun or light from a plant light.
CARING FOR GREEN ONIONS
The green onion will begin to grow longer roots within a few days and the green leaves/stems will begin growing within 4-5 days. Green onions can be grown inside or outside with equal success as long as adequate light and water. The soil should be moist, but not soggy. I water with water from our rain barrels at a rate of about 1″ per week if it does not rain.
If your pots are outside like ours are you may find you have to water more frequently in warmer temperatures.
HARVESTING GREEN ONIONS
You can pull green onions out of the ground, wash and use but we prefer to cut a few inches off the tops of our onions when we needed in a recipe. This will allow the tops to continue to grow to provide an almost endless supply of green onions. At least the leafy green portion.
