“I am always on the lookout for vegetables that can be grown year-round. Egyptian walking onion, also known as tree onion, walking onion, and topsetting onion, is a cold-hardy perennial. It’s one of the first to emerge in spring, providing a harvest of green onions first and shallot-sized bulbs by summertime.
“Tree onion is a hybrid between the common onion and Welsh onion. Its flavor is similar to shallots but a bit more pungent. Harvest young leaf blades like chives and the mature ones can be used like scallions. The bulbs are great raw, pickled, or cooked, although I try to reserve them for propagation.
“Each plant will multiply over time to develop a clump of several plants that can be divided in spring. Separating the clumps and spacing them properly yields bigger bulbs. Like other onion plants they’ll thrive best in full sun and in well-draining loamy or sandy loam soil.”
