Walking Onions, Catawissa? Red Top? Tree Onions?

[kazedwards]

That's awesome Megan. Hopefully they will provide you with plenty of seeds.

[richardw]

Is that my strain i give you Megan

[richardw]

Photo of F2 with bulbils removed



The one plant that has stems with bulbils and that produced a Walsh onion type flower


Have removed bulbils off some F1 stems as well

[meganp]

Jan 2, 2017 14:55:20 GMT -5 richardw said:

Is that my strain i give you Megan

Sorry, I have mixed all my walking onions together - they have green bulbils.

[templeton]

A quick update on my topset trials.

4 varieties -
my original - swollen bases, doesn't senesce, always produces topsets, occasionally flowers, very rarely seeds.
My seedling - from a seed from the originals, almost identical to parent.
Raymondo's Red. - drys down, small lovely red onions, produces topsets, a few flowers which are still unexplored
Green Mountain Seedling - this produces topsets last year, i think from a second year growout of a seedling that is, I planted original GM seed, got a bulb, replanted it and it produced topsets. these are what i planted.
The green Mountain topset is very interesting. Pruduces big pale straw coloured bulbs, with no topsets. Hasn't dried down properly, with browned off tops to leaves that are still a bit green at the base, so i'm hoping it will dry down properly for storage. Pinning some hopes on this for a 2 year topset to big bulb onion. I hate fiddling with little onion seedlings that need close attention. A self perpetuating big bulbing onion that i can set and forget would be a good thing.
Sorry about the picture scales - the paper labels are all the same size - A4 width - the grids didn't come out in the pics.

[Earl]

Just a FYI, will ship Walking Onion sets in May...possibly April depending on weather, you can pre-order them now if you like...

[richardw]

Ive just harvested the bed of F1 and F2 clumps and i'm very pleased with how the F2's have turned out. As i reported earlier about half of the F2 seed grown plants turned out like the Walsh onion so they were pulled out and discarded, in the remaining clumps one produced scapes with both flower heads and scapes with bulbils, seed has been produced on the plant and is planed to be grown out this winter. One other clump didnt produce any scapes but has grown very good size bulbs, i plan to grow on these onions again in spring to see what they do, if they remain a none scape producer. flic.kr/p/RQiYKe

In the remaining F2 clumps all the onions produced scapes on the outside of the onion, this is a feature that the F1 will do sometimes which i had been selecting for for years without much improvement, so to have all the F2 doing this is a real step forward, the size of both the bulbils and base onions are a little smaller than the F1's but they may grow larger in there second season, time will tell. flic.kr/p/RQiZT6.

So, the plan is to now grow all three generations plus the none scape clone

[kazedwards]

While mowing the yard at the old place today I noticed all the flowers on my walking onions. There are a lot more than last year and some of top sets even have them.

[richardw]

Cant get over just how different yours look to mine Zach, i do wonder if all the Walking Onions that exist today have come from the one cross or if there were other crosses made?

[mjc]

May 23, 2017 14:50:06 GMT -5 richardw said:

Cant get over just how different yours look to mine Zach, i do wonder if all the Walking Onions that exist today have come from the one cross or if there were other crosses made?

My understanding is that there have been several crosses, mostly independently made.

[reed]

My walking onions have huge amounts of flowers this year and not a lot of top sets. Only a few have the big, nickel sized top sets that they used to always make. I planted a bunch of other onions from the store last fall and several of them are blooming so I'm hopeful of getting some crossed seed this year.

Onions are apparently somewhat independent minded and just do what ever they feel like. I have one I posted about before but not sure where that I planted as a set in fall of 2015. I think it was paquebot that identified it, if I remember right, as Red Wethersfield.  It didn't get eaten as intended as a green onion in 2015 and bloomed last year like any other onion. It still didn't get eaten and it divided into two small and one larger bulb which I kept in storage and replanted last fall. They stayed green and grew slowly all winter, it is blooming again right now but not like a normal onion, it is making a combination of blooms and small top sets. I clipped one of its flower heads and rubbed in on some walking onion flowers and vise versa, will see what happens. 

[Earl]

I have a 4 x 8 bed of these rascals

[RpR]

I pulled my volunteer Egyptian Onion yesterday.
It popped up last year and I left be.
Big sucker this year but I have found them to be mostly just annoying buggers that take up space; you get little to use out of them but they do have that good old fashioned onion taste, nice and strong.
They work good cut fine for salads.
I have another one in one of her flower gardens and it is not doing what I expected as it did not over whelm the flowers the way it tried to do to my potatoes.

Last year I had a hold over white onion, the ones you buy as bulbettes in spring, and it turned into two tennis ball sized onions.
I had never seen one get that big before in the second year.

Out of a bunch of red onions I bought at a dedicated gardening store, I have three left. All the others not only died but left no carcass.
Never had that happen before, especially as last year I had the best onion yield ever.

[reed]

I copied the italicized part from an earlier post of mine where I talked about an onion I got as a set in the fall of 2015.

Onions are apparently somewhat independent minded and just do what ever they feel like. I have one I posted about before but not sure where that I planted as a set in fall of 2015. I think it was @paquebotthat identified it, if I remember right, as Red Wethersfield. It didn't get eaten as intended as a green onion in 2015 and bloomed last year like any other onion. It still didn't get eaten and it divided into two small and one larger bulb which I kept in storage and replanted last fall. They stayed green and grew slowly all winter, it is blooming again right now but not like a normal onion, it is making a combination of blooms and small top sets. I clipped one of its flower heads and rubbed in on some walking onion flowers and vise versa, will see what happens.

Here is that one onion now. The blooms it made this year acted like my old walking onions and did not make any seeds, instead it made bulbils. That one little bulb toward the bottom right that I peeled into smelled so good that I ate it raw. It was fine. I'm gonna replant most of these bulbs and bulbils both pretty soon and see what they do next year. Maybe? Hopefully? Some will act as they did in 2016 and make some seeds. 

[kazedwards]

Aug 14, 2017 7:42:28 GMT -5 reed said:

I copied the italicized part from an earlier post of mine where I talked about an onion I got as a set in the fall of 2015.

Onions are apparently somewhat independent minded and just do what ever they feel like. I have one I posted about before but not sure where that I planted as a set in fall of 2015. I think it was @paquebotthat identified it, if I remember right, as Red Wethersfield. It didn't get eaten as intended as a green onion in 2015 and bloomed last year like any other onion. It still didn't get eaten and it divided into two small and one larger bulb which I kept in storage and replanted last fall. They stayed green and grew slowly all winter, it is blooming again right now but not like a normal onion, it is making a combination of blooms and small top sets. I clipped one of its flower heads and rubbed in on some walking onion flowers and vise versa, will see what happens.

Here is that one onion now. The blooms it made this year acted like my old walking onions and did not make any seeds, instead it made bulbils. That one little bulb toward the bottom right that I peeled into smelled so good that I ate it raw. It was fine. I'm gonna replant most of these bulbs and bulbils both pretty soon and see what they do next year. Maybe? Hopefully? Some will act as they did in 2016 and make some seeds. 

reed isn't this similar to what you were talking about on the TPOS tread. I guess this isn't store bought onion but traditionally a bulbing onion a long the same lines as a store bought one.

It's really interesting that it's growing towards being a topsetting onion. I wonder if they will start to spread as readily as topsetting onions too. Keep us posted.