David WE Roberts wrote:
"Christina Websell" wrote in message
...

"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
Last year I had an onion start to sprout in the cupboard.

Just for the hell of it I suspended it over a glass of water until
some roots developed then planted it out in the garden.

It didn't do at all well - the top growth died off.

However, this year it is growing again and looking quite healthy.

Now, I am assuming that the onion is just another perennial which
stores energy in bulbs and in the wild propogates via seed.
So it may produce a viable bulb after another season's growth.
Is the bulb large each year, or is the first year (grown from seed)
or second year (grown from sets) the optimum time to harvest?

Alternatively it may flower and be just another Alium in the flower
bed without producing much in the way of food.

This could, of course, turn out to be a way of recycling onions
which have been in the cupboard too long :-)

I too, occasionally have these secret onions, but I never thought of
planting them out - I use the shoots like chives. Let me know how
you get on but my feeling is that you will just get a flower - which
is not all bad, you can save the seed!
Tina

Just noticed a suspiciously flower like stalk growing from the base.
The onion leaves look good and healthy.

Now is the time to decide if I should cut any flowers off before they
form.

Dried seed-heads of many of the onion family make quite a decent show in
a vase, and you don't have to do anything to them for several years. A
good bunch of cereal picked and dried before it's quite ripe looks even
nicer. I think I kept a couple of these, er, "arrangements" for maybe as
long as twenty years until I moved house. I never found out a foolproof
way of dusting them, either, which was good.

--
Mike.