If you love green onions, Egyptian walking onions are a great choice for your garden! They’re hardy perennial onions that will last for years and spread well once established to keep you in a steady supply.

The walking onion gets its name from the way it spreads. The plants produce bulbils at the top of the stalk. When these mature, they weigh down the top so it flops over and plants them in the soil beside the original plant. This clever adaptation gives them the appearance of slowly walking across the garden.

You may also hear folks call these onions tree onions or top-setting onions.

How Do You Use Egyptian Walking Onions?

We primarily use Egyptian walking onions for their delicious green tops. While they die back some in winter, they come up early and provide greens throughout the spring and fall. You just want to avoid over-harvesting while your plants are getting established. The greens are excellent in scallion pancakes, stir-fries, salads, and pasta sauces.

You can also harvest the immature bulbs are the base of the onions, but they are very hot. The bulbils at the top of the plant are also edible. When they mature, they are covered with a papery purple or red skin and taste similar to bulb onions, though their size makes them a bit more time-consuming to process.

Soil Preparation for Perennial Onions

Walking onions aren’t super fussy about soil and will thrive in a range of soil types where traditional bulb onions fail. That said, they still perform better in areas with loose soil texture. The bulbs and roots need adequate air and water.

Sandy loam is ideal for Egyptian walking onions, but not every gardener is that lucky. If you have heavy clay or nutrient-poor sandy soil, the best thing you can do is work to build up the bed’s organic matter. Mixing in compost, aged manure, rotted sawdust, or peat moss will improve soil texture. Cover crops like buckwheat are another great method for adding organic matter to the soil.

Like other alliums, walking onions do best in soil with a fairly neutral pH between 6.5 and 7.0. A soil test is a great idea. Soil that’s too alkaline will slow their growth. To raise the pH by adding dolomitic limestone or wood ash. To lower the pH, add sulfur dust or fertilize with ammonium sulfate. Test your soil again next year to see if it’s at the optimum pH.

Signs of Nutrient Deficiency

If you have poor, nutrient-deficient soil, you’ll see symptoms in the onions. Yellow-green stalks can indicate a nitrogen deficiency, while light green, slow-growing stalks could indicate a phosphorous deficiency. Plants with a potassium deficiency can have light green stalks, browning tips, and poor bulb development.

Use a fertilizer that suits your soil’s needs. Most commercial products show the ratio of primary plant nutrients as a three-number ratio, such as 5-10-5, that represents nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium. You can also use products like fish emulsion or aged manure to help raise nitrogen.

Selecting a Site

Walking onions do best in full sun, and you want to pick a spot where they’ve got a bit of room to spread out. Remember that your walking onions will last for years and produce a nice large bed. We suggest you select a permanent location outside of the area that you would normally rotate your annual crops through.

Raised beds are a good option for walking onions if you have tough, compacted soil. They’ll grow well in raised beds, but may need to be watered more frequently during the summer.

Planting and Caring for Walking Onions

We recommend planting walking onions in the fall, like you would garlic. In moderate climates, like here in Virginia, we plant from mid-October to mid-November. Cooler or hotter areas will need to adjust their dates. If you purchase walking onions from us, we’ll ship them to you based on your zip code, starting with the northernmost areas.

Plant the bulbs or bulbils about 1/2 to 1 inch deep in moderate climates or deeper in cold climates. Cover with 2 to 3 inches of mulch, such as straw or old leaves, after planting. Space your plants about 9 inches apart with room to spread and grow around them.

Keep your walking onions weeded and mulched, especially as they get established during the first year. It’s also good to keep up with watering during the first year, providing about one inch per week, though they become more drought-resistant as they get established. When caring for established plants, you should only need to water during prolonged dry periods. Onions in raised beds and pots will dry out more quickly and need more frequent watering.

You can replant bulbils or divide your patch in the fall to create a larger bed of onions. Wait to harvest the bulbs for transplanting until the stalks have dried back and turned brown. Don’t delay, as they can re-sprout in as little as one week. Harvest the bulbils for planting when they are fully grown and plump but before they dry out or sprout. 

Harvesting Egyptian Walking Onions

It’s a good idea to harvest sparingly during the plant’s first year while they get established. Then, depending on your climate, you can begin harvesting green shoots in late winter or very early spring. In summer, the greens get tough and dry, but trimming back the plants will cause them to send up more tender stalks. Fall and early winter are also great times to enjoy your walking onions as green onions.

In late spring or summer, you can also harvest the bulbils from the plant tops. Typically, we save the largest, nicest bulbils for replanting, but you can also use them for cooking. We love using them to flavor pickles!