Scallions: Eating within a 10 foot radius

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Scallions: Eating within a 10 foot radius

DIY Scallions: 10 days (background) and 36 hours (foreground) of growth.

Full disclosure: in season or not, I use a lot of scallions. I love their subtle oniony vibe, pop of color, and exotic feel. I love their tubey shape and making thin cuts on an extreme angle for geometric garnishes. I love that they are equally useable raw or cooked. I LOVE them in my Homemade Scallion Pancakes and David Chang's Scallion Ginger Sauce from his Momofuku cookbook.

So, each summer I faithfully devote an entire garden bed to growing my own scallions. And each year it is wildly unsuccessful. The seeds are microscopic, making it insanely difficult to evenly distribute them in the ground. When they do start to sprout up, in awkward clusters, they are the tiniest green threads, impossible to see and differentiate from the weeks that are intent on choking them out. But every year, I try, try again.

So, cut to me on the subway a couple of weeks ago, overhearing a conversation between two adorable twenty-something hipsters, waxing poetic about the treasures on pinterest.

Now I have not really explored pinterest, other than to see some referring pages that have come into my blog. And I have some mixed feelings about it from first glance. However, what I heard the DIYers going on and on about was the "growing scallions thing" on pinterest.

Ok, I was curious and googled as soon as I got above ground.

Apparently the scallion thing that has swept across the pinterestsphere, is the lesson that you can regenerate whole, perfectly edible scallions from the bottom tips that are usually cut off and tossed away.

Yep. And I tried it.

And yep. It works!

Just place the root ends of scallions upright in about an inch of water and put in a sunny spot. In twenty four hours you will see some growth, and in just under a week they'll be full grown again. The only upkeep is to change the water every other day or so, which also helps cut down on any oniony smell. You can repeat the process three or four times with the same scallion tip.

So excited to have a much more successful way of growing my own. And thrilled to add another vegetable to my eating local list--all year round. My apologies to the national scallion growers council.

One response to “Scallions: Eating within a 10 foot radius”

Alice says:

May 1, 2013 at 11:50 am

This is so intresting!! Me and my mom are going to try this in the north of Sweden, hopefully it will work here as well, thank you so much for sharing this

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Catie Baumer Schwalb is a chef, food writer and photographer, who splits her life between the city and the country. Not too long ago Catie was a New York City based actress and playwright for more than a decade. She has her Master of Fine Arts from the National Theater Conservatory, and her Grand Diplôme in classic culinary arts from the French Culinary Institute in New York City. ... Read More ≫

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