(Suggested by the 'Speaking of garlic' thread) How come onions and
garlic grow to maturity, have the foliage die back, are harvested,
dried somewhat, and then start growing new leaves as the bulb shrinks
and decays? If you leave them in the ground, do they act like
daffodils, coming up every year and dying back? Garlic cloves are
planted to produce bulbs, which is a lot like a daffodil producing
little adjacent bulbs, but I've never heard of leaving an onion in the
ground to reproduce. What's the deal with our fragrant frends?

In article ,
(Frogleg) wrote:

(Suggested by the 'Speaking of garlic' thread) How come onions and
garlic grow to maturity, have the foliage die back, are harvested,
dried somewhat, and then start growing new leaves as the bulb shrinks
and decays? If you leave them in the ground, do they act like
daffodils, coming up every year and dying back? Garlic cloves are
planted to produce bulbs, which is a lot like a daffodil producing
little adjacent bulbs, but I've never heard of leaving an onion in the
ground to reproduce. What's the deal with our fragrant frends?

I think you can leave them. Tulips live in the same manner.

Not the Karl Orff wrote:

I think you can leave them. Tulips live in the same manner.

Not all onions are "multipliers." Many, perhaps most, are biennial and
will produce a flower and seeds the second year. I raise my own leek seed
this way.


Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at www.albany.net/~gwoods
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1200' elevation. NY WO G