General Planting Requirements

Planting Depth and Soil

Plant each individual topset about 2 inches deep, with the pointed end up and the base into the soil. The soil should be loose and reasonably well drained. Adding compost will improve early establishment, though these onions will grow in many soil types.

Spacing and Sun

For traditional row planting, space rows about 2 - 3 feet apart, or enough room to walk during weeding and harvesting. Leaving enough room for a wheelbarrow between the rows is also helpful. Space individual topsets approximately 6 inches to 1 foot apart within each row. This spacing allows room for the plants to divide in the ground and form clumps.
They grow best in full sun, though partial shade is acceptable.

They also perform well in group plantings, where they make an attractive and useful addition to herb gardens or any other perennial garden. They can be grown in containers outdoors and, with sufficient light, indoors as well.

Water

Onions are often said to dislike “wet feet,” and in general good drainage is important. However, Egyptian Walking Onions are far more tolerant of moisture than most people expect.

One autumn, I scattered a number of topsets directly on the ground. The winter that followed was unusually wet, with periods of flooding that left the topsets under nearly two inches of standing water. Despite this, they survived without rotting. By February, they were already sprouting and growing. However, in February 2025, we had a major flood. The water flooded in to a new Egyptian Walking Onion planting, and did not leave for a couple months. Most all of the onion bulbs rotted under the water.

While they should not be kept constantly waterlogged, this experience shows that temporary saturation and even short-term flooding do not necessarily harm them. Regular watering during dry periods is sufficient, and overly frequent watering is usually unnecessary once the plants are established. When the onions start to dry out, and their stalks start turning golden-brown in the late summer, it is time to stop watering them altogether. They have entered their dormant phase and do not need the additional water. After harvesting, the onions will wake back up in the fall and begin to produce leaves, at this time watering can resume if the ground is dry.

Best Time to Plant

Egyptian Walking Onions can be planted at almost any time of year, provided the soil is not frozen. However, fall planting gives the best long-term results. Planting in autumn allows the topsets to develop roots and store energy before winter, preparing them for strong growth in spring. Fall planting also coincides with the harvest season, so topsets are readily available to plant.

Planting by season

Spring Planting
Topsets planted in spring will grow leaves and roots and form an underground bulb. Because it is their first growing season, they usually do not produce topsets unless the original topset is very large.

Summer Planting
Summer-planted topsets will establish and grow foliage and roots, but they will not form topsets during that year. Late summer topsets are usually still dormant and may not "wake up" until the days become shorter in the fall.

Fall Planting (Optimal)
Topsets planted in fall develop roots and a small bulb before winter. The leaves die back with cold weather, but the bulb stores energy. Growth resumes in late winter or early spring, and the plant matures during the following season. Most will not produce topsets their first summer, though occasional plants do.

Winter Planting
If the ground is not frozen and you can dig a 2-inch hole, you can plant in winter. Growth will be slow, often limited to root development, unless winters are mild. Mulching is especially helpful at this time and beneficial year-round. It conserves moisture, moderates temperature, reduces weeds, prevents erosion, and gradually improves soil fertility.

After planting your topsets, they spend the first growing season getting established rather than producing their own topsets. Read more about what to expect the first year and subsequent years after planting your topsets.

Where to Plant Your Egyptian Walking Onions

Placement of your Egyptian Walking Onion patch is important to consider. After all, this is not an annual garden crop, it's a perennial onion that will keep coming back. You should plant them in a permanent location that will not be disturbed. Ideally, an area fairly close to your house, but out of the way of foot traffic and lawn mowers or vehicles. The idea is that you want to be able to visit your Egyptian Walking Onions often, so you can gaze upon them, inspect them, weed them, and harvest them. Planting them along a daily walking path is a good choice.

There are 5 different zones in a permaculture landscape. Zone 1 is closest to the house, and this is an area that you visit every day, and sometimes more than once per day. Zone 5 is the farthest away, usually reserved as untouched land for wildlife, native plants, and reflection. Zone 1 is where you should ideally plant your Egyptian Walking Onions. I made the mistake of planting a great deal of my Egyptian Walking Onions in zones 4 and 5. I had to jump on my four-wheeler and drive over a mile to visit the onion patch in zone 5. As a consequence, even with my best intentions, I wasn't able to visit the onions often enough to keep them well weeded. By the end of the summer, the weeds had heavily overtaken one-third of the garden. The weeds not only competed with the onions for nutrients, they also provided great cover for the prairie voles. I had planted the onions right in the middle of prime prairie vole habitat far from the house. There were no cats to keep the little varments at bay. Needless to say, I lost a lot of the onions to the weeds and the systematic destruction from the prairie voles.

I also planted a 50' x 50' Egyptian Walking Onion garden in zone 4. It was almost 1000 feet from the house. Again, I wasn't able to keep up with the weeds. However, there were far less prairie voles because this area wasn't "wild" like the zone 5 garden area, and the neighborhood cats frequent this area to hunt. I still lost a lot of onions because this is the area that flooded heavily in 2025.

Through trial and error, I went back to what has worked the best for me in the past: planting the Egyptian Walking Onions in zone 1 where I will visit them everyday. My newest onion gardens are within 100 feet of my front door. The gardens are about 100 feet long by 20 feet wide. They border along the front of the chicken houses and pens. Caring for the chickens is part of my daily routine. While I am out there, I can't help but pull a few weeds in the new gardens. With daily visits to the gardens, the weeds never get a chance to grow over 2 inches high. It's a lot less work, and a lot more enjoyable.

Preparing a New Egyptian Walking Onion Garden

I have an ongoing battle with crabgrass (I also call it spaghetti grass). Even if you rototill a new patch for an onion garden, the grass just comes right back. And you can't rototill your Egyptian Walking Onion bed each year because they are perennial. The bulbs stay in the ground. I have tried plowing and rototilling with no luck. I don't use chemicals, so the battle with crabgrass is real.

I did find something that works: cardboard! Just mow the area where you want your Egyptian Walking Onion garden, and then lay down some cardboard. Make sure they overlap each other, and remove any tape. Then dump some topsoil over the cardboard. and rake it smooth. You can add a border of rocks, bricks, blocks, or logs. Mulch every year to help suppress weeds, add nutrients, and conserve water.

Natural Self-Planting

I scattered these topsets in the garden and now they are growing roots into the ground and leaves are emerging. Topsets that fall to the ground will often plant themselves. Given bare soil and adequate moisture, they will root without assistance and establish new plants naturally. The trick is to not let the topsets dry out in the sun. They must have moisture to continue to grow their roots into the soil. Thus, conditions have to be "right" for topsets to lay on top of the ground and grow.

How Topsets Root and Pull Themselves into the Soil

When an Egyptian Walking Onion topset touches the ground, it can begin forming adventitious roots from the base of the young bulbil. These are roots that arise from tissue other than an existing primary root system. In this case, they emerge from the basal plate at the bottom of the topset once moisture and soil contact are sufficient.

Among these adventitious roots, some may become contractile roots. Contractile roots are specialized roots that shorten after they grow, pulling the young bulb or bulbil downward into the soil. This is the same general mechanism seen in many bulb-forming plants. Rather than only anchoring the new plant, the roots actively draw it to a more stable depth where moisture is better and temperature swings are reduced.

The name of the process is contractile root action, or more simply, contractile rooting. The rooting itself begins with ordinary adventitious roots, but the downward pulling is done by the contractile roots as they thicken and shorten.

In Egyptian Walking Onions, this helps a fallen topset do more than just sprout on the soil surface. Once it lands, roots form, the young bulb begins to anchor, and contractile roots can gradually tug it into better contact with the earth. This is part of what makes the plant so effective at establishing itself wherever the topsets fall.

Planting the Ground Bulbs

These Egyptian Walking Onion bulbs are being planted in rows that are 3 plants wide. Each row is 2 feet apart - enough room to walk between the rows to enable weeding and harvesting.

When planting mature bulbs, place them root-end down and bury them so that at least the lower half of the bulb is covered with soil. The base must be well anchored for proper growth. To encourage larger bulb growth, give them enough space to grow by planting them individually at least 6" apart.