No Grow

Several weeks ago when I was killing time on Pinterest I learned you could regrow green onions from the stem ends. I pinned the information, thinking it would be an interesting project to try. The opportunity recently presented itself, when my co-op purchase included three bunches of green onions.

The directions for regrowing onions looked easy. You save the roots, along with a couple of inches of the white bulb, and place them in a glass with water. In a couple of days the green stalks should start growing back, and in about a week you'll be able to use them again.

The next night I used the first bunch of green onions. Instead of throwing the bottoms in the stock bag I keep in the freezer I put them in a small glass jar, filled it with water, and set the jar on the counter top   It was hard to keep the onions standing upright, but I figured it would be easier when they sprouted.  The next day it looked like the outer layer of each onion was starting to get a little higher at the top and I got excited.  This project was going to be easy!

However, that initial spurt was it.  A couple of days later I used more onions, added the bottoms to the jar, and waited.  Nothing happened, except I started to smell a stinky-onion odor (even though I changed the water daily).  I checked the jar.  Most of the onion stems were slimy. I threw them in the compost pile.

There were four that survived, but they did NOT thrive. Each sent up one anemic shoot.  A Google search for "green onions in water" had millions of results. I only went through the first few pages, but all of the writers of those posts had success growing their green onions in water. I started to feel like a failure.

Since I wasn't having any luck regrowing the onions in water I decided to take the project in another direction.  I also read you can put green onion ends in dirt and they'll regenerate. Today I got a small pot, filled it with topsoil, and stuck the sickly onion shoots in.  I wonder if I'll have any better luck now?

Five years ago today: New thing #99--It's Meez!