I have to be efficient with the way I produce vegetables in my back yard. I am very compressed for space, so I tend to use hanging baskets, the garden wall, large containers and I grow vertically quite a lot. This year, I was bemoaning the fact that I never bother growing onions because I don’t have room when I saw this neat little idea doing the rounds on social media.
Growing onions vertically!
How To Easily Grow A Supply Of Onions Indoors
Who wants to eat organic home grown food? And the best way would be if you could grow them yourselves. That way you’ll always know what you eat and it cannot get any fresher than picking it up from your window and straight on the table.
Here is how to grow your own organic onions in the comfort of your home or perhaps the greenhouse, if you are luck enough to have one. The best thing about it is that it grows by the window, no need for an outdoor garden or any special conditions. Check it out.
The idea is to keep cutting the green ‘chives’ or stalks to use for cooking and salads and to treat the plant as a cut and come again vegetable. They will be nice and delicately flavoured when reaching about six inches long. For a stronger flavour, allow the green shoots to simply mature for longer.
Personally, when the onions get too big, I will probably empty the jar, use the bulbs for cooking in the usual way (before the onions go soft and off), and start again.
What You Need
- 5 L plastic bottle
- pair of scissors
- onion bulbs
- soil
- water
Directions
Start by cutting the neck off the plastic bottle. You can tape the neck back on later, like I have, if you wish.
Cut some holes in it, with the scissors. The holes should be big enough to push the onion ‘sets’ through, if that is one of the two suggested methods you choose.
Put layers of soil and sprouts, adding them until the bottle is full. Or, fill the bottle with soil, compress it down a bit , then poke the onion sets through the holes.
Both ways apparently work just fine.
As I already mentioned, you can add the neck back on (simply tape it around) or leave it like that.
Water the soil and set it on your windowsill/greenhouse worktop.
In no time, onions will sprout out the bulbs, you can watch them grow, and eventually flavour your dishes with them.
The varieties I have used for this tidy little experiment are Sturon, Stutgarter Giant and a red one called Karmen.
Don’t forget to water them regularly!
Enjoy!
Source: OrganicHealth.co
ANOTHER NEAT TRICK – CUT & COME AGAIN SPRING ONIONS OR SCALLIONS…
– Buy one clump of spring onions at the store.
-Use your green onion as you normally would, but reserve the roots and keep at least one to two inches of the white bulb intact.
-Place the rooted bulbs in a glass with water by a window.
-In just a couple of days, the green stalks will start growing back.
-In about a week, you’ll be able to use them again.
Just be sure to change the water ever couple of days and rinse the bulbs.
I also managed to set aside a little time to get some pickles on the go, this week. Shop bought free range eggs (30 of them!) and a large bag of supermarket ‘hot’ chillies. Two jars of Sarsons pre-spiced Pickling Vinegar. I added some dried, crushed chillies to the eggs, some peppercorns, two teaspoons of sugar two tea spoons of salt and a sprinkling of dried herbs. To the jar of pickled chillies I added two teaspoons of sugar, two teaspoons of salt, some mustard seeds and peppercorns. I’ll start those in a about a month. Of course, when my own chilli chilli plants are producing later in the Summer, I will be drying, freezing and pickling them, too.
Champion!
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Love your witty and commonsense ideas l will certainly give it a try. thanks