Hey there, I'm Nicole Burke owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary, Incorporated and creator of the Kitchen Garden Academy.
Today, I want to teach you how to regrow pearl onions. I love pearl onions just because they're so cute. I mean doesn't that just make you happy?
This is a super simple project, anyone can do it.
All you need are some organic pearl onions. This is what mine look like from the produce section and you need a little pot with some compost or soil in there.
All you want to do, you can use like a dibber or a butter knife. I have a spoon here. That's what I'm going to use. All you’ve got to do is realize that this is the tip. This is a spot that's going to grow up and produce greens. This is the root system. This is the part of this bulb that is going to go down deeper into the soil.
Anytime you replant pearl onions, you just want to make sure that parts are down and the tip part is up. You want to protect the tuber as you start to plant. Just make a deep hole and you want to place it so that the onion is all the way buried right to the neck of the tip.
You want this entire bulb underneath and then you'll have the soil level right there as the tip starts to grow then you can just water it in pretty lightly, put it in a similar shade spot in a windowsill, or something like that, and just let it continue to grow in the little bit of sunlight that it gets and you'll be good to go in just a few, a few, I don't know, maybe a week or less than that. You are going to have these cute little green onions sprouting up from your pearl onions- super fun.
After they get to about 5 inches, you can start to cut on them from the side. let them continue to grow, and you'll have fresh little green onion snips like from here until spring super duper fun. So easy and a great way to make the most of this little Pearl onion purchase.
I just love it, don't you?
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There are three simple little truths we can learn from this lesson on growing regrowing pearl onions.
The first thing I want to show you is just this super cool thing about the way that onions grow in the first place. If you want to just play around you can start to just peel the onion literally and what you can realize is each of those skins on the onions represents one new layer of growth. Well as the onion starts to grow that last layer of skin that you peel off that was really the first one to form. And then the one after that was the second one to form. You can continue to peel them back until you get to that softer part of the onion knowing that each time, you peel it back you're going from oldest to youngest in the onion. And if the stem were still here, each of those skins is connected to one little piece of the stem. If you were to pull it off that piece of the stem would come off and then on the other side the same would be true too. It's pretty cool to see how this little plant has so many intricate parts to it. At least I think it's magical.
The first thing to see is just the intricacies and the uniqueness of these simple little things that we take for granted like pearl onions.
The second thing that I wanted to tell you about pearl onions is that these are obviously great for containers. They're so small. They can even fit a lot Into a small little container. You can grow them with just a little bit of light, not a lot of water. It's just a fun thing to have to grow. You can have it on a porch or patio or inside almost year-round. So if you're just looking for a little thing to kind of get you going and excite you about gardening, this just may be your new best friend.
The final thing this teaches us is how a little bit of something fresh from a garden can change a whole meal. I experienced this when I first started gardening, I would just have little things like some cuts of garlic chives or some green onions or maybe a few fresh green beans or like a few cherry tomatoes or some sprigs of basil to throw in with dinner and I noticed that even if everything else came from the grocery that little bit of freshness that was just cut before we ate it made the the meal feel exquisite. So we might just be having noodles and sauce and some mozzarella cheese.
I brought in some fresh-cut parsley and it all of a sudden felt like a gourmet meal. At least it did to little old me. So if you're looking for something easy, if sometimes, I'm stumbling on my words, if you feel intimidated you feel like you have to go all out and grow every single thing. I want you to just back up and realize that something so simple like cutting some green onions from a container can make you start to enjoy the experience of kitchen gardening and warm you up to do more and more and more. But don't jump in all the way and feel overwhelmed if you haven't yet just experienced the simple joy of cutting a little green onion to top off your dinner.
It's super fun, super easy and super magical. Thanks so much for watching. I will see you next time. Bye.
