How to grow spring onions from scraps is super, super easy. These are also referred to as scallions or green onions, so you don’t get confused. Scallions seem to be the popular term in the United States while spring onion is better known in the UK. That said, of all my home gardening projects, growing scallions from scraps has got to be the simplest. It’s dead simple.
The best part is that unlike potatoes, bell peppers or onion bulbs, for example, that call for a bit more patience on the part of the grower, when it comes to green onions the wait is extremely short. You can start enjoying your regrown spring onions in a variety of dishes in a matter of days. Yes just days.
Depending on your preference, for some people the only thing they care about on spring onions are the leaves. The green leaves. The white stalk, which becomes scraps, is for discarding. However, some people utilize the whole thing. That’s still okay. Once you learn how to grow spring onions from scraps as I will demonstrate here, the honest truth is that you will never need to buy spring onions again from your grocery store!
What You need to Grow Spring Onion from Scraps
You obviously need some scallion scraps to begin with. These can come from your regular kitchen activities or you can make a dedicated store purchase of a bunch of spring onions from which to get the scraps. You will also need a growing container. Let the size of the container be guided by the amount of spring onion you are interested in regrowing. Some nutrient rich garden soil will also be required. This should be enough to fill the container to be used.
In short, you need:-
- Spring onion scraps
- Good size container
- Nutrient rich soil
Step 1 – Get your Spring Onions and Let’s Prepare the Scraps.
In my case, for the purposes of this tutorial, I purchased a bunch of spring onions from my local supplier. These should be straight-forward to get in many places. Apart from grocery stores, spring onions feature a lot at farmer’s markets.
Take a knife or kitchen scissors and cut-off the green onion leaves leaving only the white stalk. Depending on the size of the green onions, the white part can be too long. This can be trimmed off too, leaving short pieces of the white stalk scrap which is what we need to plant. Use the cut-off green leaves in your dishes if you so wish.
Separate the bunched up stalks into single spring onions in reading them for the soil. You can have as many of these as you have space to put them. In this tutorial, I prepared only five for demonstration purposes. Once this is done, set aside and let’s turn our focus to the growing container.
Step 2 – Prepare your Spring Onions Planting Container.
Any container will do really. It can be a specially bought potting container or a repurposed container lying around the yard. You could even do this straight in a garden in the ground. The bottom line is that all we need is somewhere to plant our spring onion scraps that we prepared in Step 1 above. If using a container, as shown here ensure it has drainage holes beneath so your scallions are not water logged as you water them on a regular basis.
Fill your container with soil. I recommend nutrient rich soil which can be rich garden soil or garden soil mixed with compost. Keep in mind that this container will be a permanent home for your growing and thriving spring onions for the foreseeable future. So you need the best soil you can get to get them started well.
Take the spring onion scraps and mark their positions in the container. While you could plant them haphazardly and get away with it, in my case I chose to be a little methodical by giving them space between each other for aeration, feeding and general presentation. How you plant is really up to you. If you like things in lines, put them in lines. If you like random presentation plant randomly.
Step 3 – Time to Plant Your Spring Onions
At this stage, go ahead and plant your spring onions. To do this easily, take a stick or metal object and poke holes into the soil. Place the scallions in the holes and secure them with the soil. What you need is to have the roots covered and secure. That’s all. The hole need not be too deep nor too shallow.
Next step after planting is to generously water the green onion stalks. Place the container in a shade, away from direct sunlight at least for the first day or two. This marks the start of the amazing race to regrow. The first watering will act as the signal to this amazing plant to start the regrow process. Step back grower and enjoy the show.
Stage 4 – Spring Onions Regrowing Fast
This is how the planted crop looks in just three days. It is well on its way to becoming a legitimate spring onion plant once again, complete with its flavourful green leaves. Continue watering as needed at least once per day.
Stage 5- Spring Onion Harvest Ready
So this is day 5 after planting of what was once called spring onion scraps! We have a still growing but mature enough spring onion plant for use in dishes. At this point of harvest, the leaves are at least 11 inches (ca. 28 cm) long.
Explore all the various spring onion uses from salads to soups and begin enjoying your labour. When harvesting, most people are after the leaves. So these can be clipped as and when needed. As long as you water the container, the scallions leaves will regrow providing an endless supply of spring onion leaves. This is why I said, in the beginning, that once you get these going there won’t be any apparent reason to buy spring onions from the grocery store ever again.
Conclusion
As I have hopefully clearly demonstrated in this tutorial, how to grow spring onions from scraps at home is super simple anyone could do it. Spring onions are an amazing plant. They respond to watering and good soils so well in a few short days you will would have started enjoying this flavour laden vegetable.
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