propagating egyptian walking onion

hi,
anyone else excited about breeding perennial onion? I've been working on improving for many years, and my goal is to get a perennial onion approx the size of my fist during the summer harvest time (~3"diameter?) though it's also nice to get lots of the "spring onions" smaller size too in spring and fall.
And what I especially love is that they are perennial and propagate both by division and by the seed head bulb tops, and they seem to like to grow almost anywhere.

We've got some that relatively consistently portray the traits we're selecting for, in the environment of a high-tunnel in Missouri, USA, though they also do well in the outdoors here, just maybe not quite so large as those grown in the hoop house. The line of them isn't completely stabilized yet and a lot depends on how they are treated once someone plants them of course. Anyway, it's one of the things I love. And if other folks had other varieties they'd been working on improving that potentially would be cool to share/trade too.

This sounds great! I'm in NE Kansas, 6a . What zone in MO are you located in? Also, how were you able to get Egyptian onions to set real seed? I've only ever seen bulbils which just produce clones of the parent with no genetic exchange taking place.

I'm breeding perennial potato onions on my northern Minnesota property. There are a couple threads about them around here. 3" is about the largest bulbs that I get so far.

We're in zone 5b, and of course the hoop house emulates a warmer climate but they can perform well outside too. It's just the bulb tops and the divisions I've been using of the walking onions so I suppose it's the same genetic material as the parents in some ways however they do certainly display a lot of difference, the plants must readily mutate and when given a happy growing environment (water, space, warmth) thrive more too. And in my experience I don't think the bulbs always are 100% like the parents but the divisions mostly are, I like to plant out a mix of both honestly as I select for the characteristics -- I do appreciate newer helpful mutations but I feel more confident when propagating from division that they'll be most what I want to encourage if it's coming from a quality parent plant.

my goal is to get a perennial onion approx the size of my fist during the summer harvest time (~3"diameter?) though it's also nice to get lots of the "spring onions" smaller size too in spring and fall.

I am curious about your experiment.

How big is the largest onion that you have gotten so far?

the biggest onion we've gotten during the summer season when they get big is probably a little under 3" diameter, and our largest bulblet tops are maybe the size of a half dollar. definitely the larger bulblets do consistently produce larger onions as adults. I'm also selecting for onions that only have about 3 at the base and often that is correlated with having only 3-5 bulblets at the top.  
AND....in order to get the largest onion bottoms I think it's important to remove the stalk that it sends up to produce those bulb tops. I've done many side by side comparison of clone onions growing from the same location and the one where the stalk was removed in a timely manner created a larger onion (similar to annual onions and garlic and maybe to be expected). So, it's a tricker in some ways trying to expand the stock and also picking off the stalk that would create seed bulblets in order to create something larger in order to see how big it could get. In our experience, on average when onions are allowed to grow the bulblet stalk they then seem to be about 2/3 the size it would had the stalk instead been removed.
I don't take a lot of pictures.... here's one from today, they are getting into their dormancy stage and would then be divided out before spring hopefully but this is a fine example specimen.
I can post a few older pictures too.

a couple other pics, couldn't find one of the summer bulb size, will be sure to take some photos of that stage this year

I would like to replant Egyptian Onions again in my garden ... The chickens dug them out when a hole in their yard fence let them into where their little scratching feet didn't belong.

I would be happy to reimburse your postage for a few bulbils to get started once more --- inside poultry-proof fencing this time. I am inspired to test and then share the results of some ideas for increasing the bulb size, too.

I have grown Egyptian Onions very successfully for decades in Maine and then here in New Mexico 2006-2018.  They are a wonderful hardy, flavorful vegetable!


Anna Seaborne

P O Box 91  (mailing)
or
207 Pike Place  (FedEx or UPS)

Conchas Dam NM 88416

(575) 868 0595

higgsbiggs@yahoo.com