Taming Your Topsets:
A Guide To Managing Your Egyptian Walking Onions
Egyptian Walking Onions are travelers. They really do walk, and they will walk across your garden if you let them. However, their meanderings are slow. Each plant can potentially "walk" 1 to 3 feet per year, depending on its height and if the conditions are right for the topsets to take root.
How walking happens
These onions do not spread by underground runners. Their movement happens above the soil. Each plant forms a cluster of topsets at the top of its stalk. When the cluster grows heavy, the stalk bends, touches the earth, and a new plant is born a short distance away. This gentle motion is their way of “walking.” Learn more about how Egyptian Walking Onions walk.
Keeping them on a leash
If you don't want your Egyptian Walking Onions to spread, simply harvest the topsets. If you don't want your Egyptian Walking Onions to spread, simply harvest the topsets. In the fall, collect the topsets that remain on the plants as well as any that have fallen to the ground. What to do with all your topsets? Plant them where you want them, sell them, give them to your friends and neighbors, or eat them.
Read more about eating your Egyptian Walking Onions.
Managing Colony Density
Egyptian Walking Onions can also spread by ground bulb division, however, this only enlarges the clump which remains in the same location. Too much crowding can lead to smaller bulbs and reduced topset size. Autumn is a good time to thin dense clumps in the ground by lifting, dividing, and replanting them farther apart.
Letting them roam
If you enjoy watching the onions follow their own paths and letting them walk on the wild side, then allow them the freedom by leaving the topsets to their own devices. Let them fall where they may, take root, and grow new plants. Your onion patch will expand naturally.
Expanding Your Garden
One of the pleasures of managing an Egyptian Walking Onion patch is that it naturally produces planting material. You can expand your garden by replanting harvested topsets, dividing bulbs, or transplanting young walkers. Over time a small patch can easily become a large perennial colony, or several small patches.
Taming the Weeds
Weeds are the nemesis of the perennial garden. You can't use chemicals, or you will damage your onions. There are three great ways to organically tame the weeds:
1. Location
Keep you Egyptian Walking Onion garden near your house where you will walk often on your daily routine. If your garden is close by, you will be more likely to pull weeds when they are small. Plus, you get to see your onions more often than if they were planted further away. Good placements include: along paths, near the house, next to chicken runs, next to garden beds you visit daily, along fences or borders.
2. Initial garden bed preparation
Select where the garden area will be (close to your home - permaculture zone 1). Mow all the existing vegetation close to the ground. You can even rototill the soil. Lay down lots of tape-free cardboard. Make sure the pieces overlap well. Cover the cardboard with about 1 foot of topsoil or compost - the thicker, the better. The cardboard acts as a decomposable weed barrier. By the time the worms eat it, and it's all decomposed, the weeds and grass underneath are no longer viable. Most of the weed issues after that will be from blown in weed seeds, which can be remedied with mulch.
Don't make the mistake of using landscape fabric. That stuff provides pests like prairie voles with excellent cover. Weeds can actually grow up through landscape fabric, or they can germinate on top of it and grow roots down through it. Mulching doesn't work with landscape fabric.
3. Mulch
Keep paths between your onion clumps or rows heavily mulched. You can mulch the onions themselves also. Mulching is very beneficial to a garden. It keeps weeds down, moisture is retained, soil and plant temperature is more steady, acts as a fertilizer, reduces soil erosion and compaction. Some examples of good mulching material are: straw, hay, grass clippings, pine needles, cardboard, wood chips, bark, and leaves.
Read more about where and when to plant your Egyptian Walking Onion gardens.
Pests
The worst enemy of the Egyptian Walking Onion that I have ever seen are prairie voles. They will tunnel just under the ground and systematically eat the onion bulbs clump by clump. One day your onion plants are standing tall and green, and the next day, they are laying on the ground after these little varmints have chewed the roots off the bottom of the bulb. Read more about Egyptian Walking Onion pests .
A great way to rid your onion patch of prairie voles is to get an Egyptian Walking Onion guardian .
Seasonal Observations
Because Egyptian Walking Onions change through the year, the garden benefits from occasional seasonal checks.
Typical observations include:
-
Spring
- strong leaf growth
- dividing clumps if needed Early Summer
- stalk formation
- topset development Mid–Late Summer
- topsets maturing
- stalks bending and planting themselves (walking) Fall
- dormant or slow growth depending on climate Winter
- bulbs resting in the soil
Simply watching the colony through these cycles helps guide maintenance.
Read more about the Egyptian Walking Onion life cycle .
The Core Idea
Managing Egyptian Walking Onions is less about strict gardening rules and more about guiding a living colony. With occasional thinning, light weeding, and thoughtful placement, a patch can remain productive for many years while continuing to expand and renew itself.