Walking Onion

Allium x proliferum

Characteristics

Culture

As the name implies, Walking Onions do, in fact, walk. They are perennial and they will eventually walk across your garden. However, they are easy to control and aren’t considered invasive. Leave a few plants in your garden every year if you want the plants to keep walking for decades to come, but pull any that walk where they aren’t welcome. Like all their onion cousins, walking onions don’t appreciate heavy, wet soil. However, they are easy to grow in full sun and average, well-drained soil. You can use the stalks like chives. This onion care is uninvolved and basically just requires keeping the soil lightly moist, but never soggy or drenched. Otherwise, thin the plant as needed and divide the mother plant whenever it becomes overgrown or less productive – usually every two or three years. The plants die back to look scruffy over the winter, but very early in the spring new green shoots emerge from the brownish bases. Like other onions, the leaves are hollow. The red or purple bulbs are only slightly enlarged from the stem, and about an inch long.

Noteworthy Characteristics

Unlike most onion varieties, walking onions set bulbs at the top of the plant – each with numerous small onions that you can harvest for planting or eating. Walking onions taste much like shallots, although slightly more pungent.  Instead of flowers, this plant produces topsets, a cluster of bulbils, at the top of the stalk where the flowers and seeds would normally be. The stalks eventually flop over from the weight of the bulbils (if not harvested) and replant themselves, thus beginning their “walk” across the ground. It is thought to be originally native to India or Pakistan, then later introduced into Europe by the Romans.

Problems

Thrips can be a problem in hot, dry summers but the damage is primarily cosmetic.

Garden Uses

Dig the entire clump or just harvest individual stems or bulbs. The small, underdeveloped onions at the bottom of the mature plant are edible but are very hot. Eat the tender young shoots and stems as green onions. The bulbils can be eaten, too, if not replanted. They can also be stored for a few months. If you leave the plant it will produce topset bulbils the following year. If you want more onions, just plant a few new bulbils.