Walk like an onion

EGYPTIAN walking onions sound almost too good to be true: from one plant, four harvests and, if you do it properly, you can pick them year after year after year.

- Mark Diacono

You may be wondering about their name. Walking onions are thought to originate from India and Pakistan, where they've been grown for more than 5,000 years. It was, however, the Egyptians who really adopted them, believing that their smell would protect and keep diseases at bay. They thought that these onions had the power to awaken the dead and they are even featured in tomb paintings from as far back as 3000BC. What of the ‘walking’ part of their name? Read on.

Every part of an Egyptian walking onion is edible and—being so robust and trouble free—success is largely about ensuring you harvest in a way that allows the plant to flourish. At the base, small, mild, shallot-like onions throw thin, hollow, chive-like leaves towards the spring sky, which develop into something like spring onions. By all means, pick up to one-third of either: what you remove will regrow quickly in all but the coldest months. As summer arrives, the leaves develop small onions (known as bulbils or topsets) in clusters of up to 20 at their tips; these are the infant plants of the next generation.