Rakkyo oddity question

[blueadzuki]

Hi all.
As I many have mentioned earlier, a few months ago when I was buying rakkyo (Allium chinense) bulbs to grow in my garden, I made a truly astonishing discovery; a bulb with what was clearly a scape growing out of it. Because of this that bulb got special treatment (a pot of it's own, immediate planting, and watering on houseplant schedule. eventually the little sheath at the top opened and revealed a single "thing" which I took for a bulbil. however I left it alone, and eventually the "outside of the bulbil split revealing it was in fact a flower bud Accordign to everything I have read, Rakkyo NEVER makes flowers. Not the "nearly never" of garlic a firm "absoutely never" (then again it isn't supposed to produce bulbils either, or indeed a scape, like sofneck garlic, it's supposed to repoduce EXCLUSIVELY through bulb division.) the flower alas aborted (or more accurately the pod it produced aborted) without production of vialble seed (I probably prodded it too much).
Now we get to my question, The flower is gone but I still have the plant sitting in a pot inside my house (I brought it in when I thought there might be a frost) What do you think I should do now? Specifically, should I keep the plant indoors for the winter (in the hope the warm condtions induce another flower) or take it outside like the rest of the bulbs to winterize and risk it freezing to death (because it's been inside it has something like 3x the leaf mass of the ones that got planted outside, so I'm a little worried that if I put it out now, the extra leaf growth will freeze and take the plant with them (the inside growth is a lot longer and softer than the outside ones). Can allliums even GET a second scape from the same plant, or does it have to divide and start again? Since as far as I can tell, what happened here isn't supposed to happen period, informations seems lacking and I am in the dark.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Google has a number of photographs of flowers which are called Allium chinense. For example: Specimen at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

[circumspice]

Maybe you can place it outside on a warmer southern exposure. Next to a rock or concrete wall would be best because of the thermal mass. Or you might keep it in the coldest part of your house.

[blueadzuki]

Joseph, so it does. Must have been using the wrong search pararmeters. Guess they meant it was like garlic (prouduces flowers, but seed production is rare) I note it has quite a diffuse panicle, which would explain the single flower bud. Guess I now have my quest, while you all work on getting fertile seed out of garlic, I'll work on this!
Circum, I can try but we really don't have a "warmer southern exposure" the whole house could be considered a rock (it's brick) but I don't think the south side has any area where plants can be put down (at least, without them being several feet under hedges) . As for coldes't part of the house, I guess that would be my bedroom; I tend to leave the windows open most of the time, even in winter (leftover from my colledge years, when my window stuck open the first day in my dorm room and I literally couldn't close it all year, regardless of weather. Ot why the plaster in my room needs repair now so bad) Actually it might make for an interesting experiment. how plants fare in conditions where the air is subzero, but they are getting heat from the bottom (since if they are near the window, they'd be sitting on the radiator)

[circumspice]

I can place potted plants anywhere I want around my home's foundation. I have absolutely no foundation plants at all. My foundation is unsuitable for planting anything because it is compacted crushed limestone. I guess I could put in raised beds for any foundation planting that I want to do... I mostly make use of the north side & the south side of the house for my potted plants.

[blueadzuki]

Well, circumstances sort of took the matter out of my hands. A second Rakkyo bulb (in the outside pot I planted) sent out a scape, so I had to pot and take that one in (while it is possible rakkyo plants can overwinter scapes outdoors, I do not have knowledge to that effect, and since it seems that putting up a scape is not a common occurance, and I REALLY want to try for seeds, I didn't think it worth the risk.) and so for space reasons, as this one came in, the other one had to go out. I don't know what I'll do if they ALL start making scapes (actually if they all do, that probably indicates that making thier scapes when the temperatures turn chilly is normal, so I can just leave them where they are.)

[nicollas]

blueadzuki, any news about this great project ?

[blueadzuki]

Not a lot and what I do have isn't all the positive. The second plants scape also died without making any fertile seed. This was followed by a winter that was really lousy for rakkyo outdoors. It turns out that, while rakkyo has not real problem with cold or even freezing, it can NOT handled long periods of it being both cold and WET, as it was this previous spring (we didn't start getting the warmer days one associates with spring reliably until almost mid June this year. Most of the rakkyo simply rotted in the ground. Of the 60 or so bulbs that had gone in I think only about 4-5 actually made it through alive, and those made bulbs that are only about 1/5 of the size of the bulbs that went into growing them (since rakkyo reproduces mostly from bulb division bulbs tend to grow to full size and split in a single year. You put one bulb in in the fall and when you harvest in mid summer, there's a cluster of 2-3 bulbs (normally 2) the same size as what you put in. sort of like shallots, I guess) And even THAT one came out kind of odd. ALL of the one's that made it were in a little cluster, tight enough to show they had come from one planted bulb. it basically looks like that one made it through by bypassing it's entire "store up food" phase (they do that through the fall and milder parts of winter as well as in the spring), divided the MOMENT it went into the ground at a rate double what is normal and put it's hopes on many tiny bulbs instead of 2-3 normal sized ones. The bulbs I got are also a lot shorter and proportionally fatter as well as being green but since I transplanted them when spring started (with all of the others rotting, I did not want the fit ones to succumb to saprophytic fungi) that is normal, I must have replanted them a bit shallower than I should (when the bulb on rakkyo is deep underground, like it is supposed to be it comes out long and mostly white with a pale pink/purple overlay on parts. If you move the soil so that the bulb is above ground it photosynthesizes and goes green, and for some reason also develops a shorter more round shape. Or it could be genetic (one bulb from last years crop made 3 instead of 2 and was that same odd rounded green shape. Those three were the only ones of my own that got replanted (I ate the rest) all the rest were fresh from the store bulbs. I suppose it is possible the new bulbs were a different less cold tolerant strain than the old ones, and the ones I got are descended from one of the three re-plants.) What I got is now curing in my drawer, waiting for re-plant time around December. Get back to you next spring, when I see what happens

[nicollas]

Thanks for the return, sorry for all the pb you've encountered !

hope next season will be better !

[blueadzuki]

found the survivors in my drawer yesterday; turns out there are six of them (two singles and two pairs), each about the size of a small cocktail onion. So they probably ARE from the one the divided into 3 from last year (the two singles probably were attached originally and I split them when I re-planted them. That size seems a little small for getting through the iffy winters here; alliums that sized often exhaust their stored food before spring (we don't tend to get long steady freezes or nice insulating layers of winter snow around here, so plants that are programmed to grow as soon as it is warm enough often get into trouble; it warms up, the bulbs use a little of their stored food to start growing, it gets cold again, the cold kills off whatever grew, it gets warm again and so on until the bulb drains out.) So with so few I'll probably simply put a medium pot on one of the radiators plant them in that over the winter and see if a little inside light can give them the equivalent of a second spring and summer so by the real spring, they have LOTS of energy to really put on weight (or, dare I hope, to send out scapes?)

[heidereich]

Okay, I'm some years late.
Rakkyo will make flowers, which you can eat - nice for decoration of dishes. However, the flowers will not produce seeds.
When the green will get yellow, wait some days and then dig the bulb out and dry them. In spring and autumn you can put the bulbs back into the soil for growing up new plants. Fertilizer should have NP, but is not necessary.

[blueadzuki]

Thanks for the info, though it isn't all that useful to me anymore (I stopped growing rakkyo several years ago, when I realized my soil conditions caused it to divide faster than it could fatten up, leading to massive numbers of bulbless plants (good for scallions, but not much else)

I will also note that there are companies that sell rakkyo seeds so there are at least some strains that are fertile (maybe it's a garlic thing, except with a bigger population of "yes it can" types, since seed companies can offer seed packets (which, as of this point in time, they can't for garlic)

[Al]

I cannot find companies online offering rakkyo seed, I'm doubtful what sellers may describe as rakkyo seed is actually authentic Allium chinense seed. Can anyone post links to reliable rakkyo seed suppliers? I am now into 3rd or 4th year growing rakkyo from what were originally tiny bulbs. They grow & multiply well, I have managed some bigger bulbs but still too small to be worthwhile. I am now giving them deeply cultivated & improved soil, & wide spacing to try to develop bigger bulbs.

[davidp]

Another rakkyo onion gardener here. Last Fall I obtained two groups of this cultivar to plant. One source was a group of 30 bulbs shipped to me directly from Japan, in December, and were immediately planted outside in a bed.

The second source was from an Ebay vendor here in the US. This came as a group of rakkyo seedlings, packed very tightly together in two small pots, which also arrived in December. These seedlings were separated out, individually planted into cell-packs, and placed under grow-lights until February. They were then re-potted into 3" containers and put into the greenhouse, where they stayed until planting into the outside beds in April.

At this point the two groups have fared very differently. About half the bulbs planted in December survived, and those that did are not growing all that well. However, the seedlings planted in April are thriving and look very healthy.

So, I'm not sure that fall planting of bulbs is the right approach for my situation. However, after I harvest the ones I'm growing now, I'm wondering if the storage capability of the bulbs will be sufficient to carry them through to next spring. Or maybe I just need to more heavily mulch them if planted this fall.

Any suggestions?

[philagardener]

Welcome, davidp ! What state/zone are you gardening in?