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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-182
Egyptian Walking Onion
Allium × proliferum
Egyptian walking onion earns its name by planting itself: instead of flowers, it grows clusters of small onion bulbs atop a tall stalk, which bends over under their weight and lays them on the ground to root and grow into new plants. Both the bulbils and the small underground bulb taste like a strong onion and make classic pickling onions, and the leaves work like chives in salads - but only picked sparingly, since heavy leaf harvest cuts into how many bulbils the plant makes. Set once in fall, a patch keeps walking and replanting itself for years with no digging, dividing or replanting needed. It tolerates soil from acidic to strongly alkaline, but needs full sun and no shade at all.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–9
- Soil
- Loam
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 4.5–8.3
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 24–36 in
- Mature spread
- 12–24 in
- Plant spacing
- 10–12 in
- Root type
- Bulb
- Spread pattern
- Root
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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