Skip to main content

Green onions, spring onions or shallots or…?

I have many confusing conversations with people about green onions, spring onions and shallots. Well, not that many, but when it does come up between myself and another gardener or cook, it is important to first clarify what we are actually talking about, because everyone seems to have a different idea of what these alliums actually are.

This year I planted leeks, and what I call spring onions and what I thought were shallots.  They both did quite well, especially considering that each bunch of shallots came from single cloves given to me by a friend and all the spring onion seeds were saved from the previous year.  I’ve grown more than we can eat right away and I need to make room in the garden, so I am going to try to keep some of the shallots for storage and dehydrate the rest to make more onion flakes.

"shallots", "spring onions" and leeks.  They are definitely leeks.

The confusion is caused by the fact that I never bought any of these vegetables as seeds with names on the packet, they are from bulbs and seeds that were given to me, so I don’t really know what I’ve planted!  

definitely leeks
Its taken a while to figure out what’s going on as different countries seem to have different names for the same plant.  Here’s what I think is going on in my garden:

Further investigation reveals that “shallots” (or scallions, green onions, spring onions, salad onions, green shallots, onion sticks, long onions, baby onions, precious onions, yard onions, gibbons, or syboes) can be any small onion bulbs, whether they are immature or a small variety.  However, as mine grow from one clove to form a cluster, they are most likely Allium ascalonicum, rather than Allium cepa.

"shallots"

The vegetable that I call spring onion seems to a cultivar of Allium fistulosum, and as they form no bulb, they are technically scallions going by that link.  However, it appears that scallion can also mean any small onion, as in the definition of shallots above.

"spring onions"

I think I’ll just keep calling them what I call them, I just wanted you to know what I was talking about.  To me, the green stems with no bulb are spring onions and the multiple cloves are shallots.  I haven’t tried growing any underground onions so far, but I think that will be an experiment for this winter.

Do you suffer from the same confusion?  what do you call them?

Comments

  1. LOL I just call them Onions. Saves confusion with the kids...vbg. I also grow leeks but I know what they are as the leaves are a different colour - more grey than green and are sharper on the edges.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am with you on this Liz. I cook a lot of Thai food and the pinky coloured bulbs are shallots and the long skinny green ones are spring onions.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What's in a name?? Don't forget Welsh Onions, Japanese Bunching Onions, Multiplier Onions, Tree Onions, Egyptian Walking Onions and Potato Onions........

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah, true, I should just call them onions. I know Fiona is a kiwi too and that's why we call them the same thing, so it was cheating to ask really :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Like Judi, I call them Welsh onions, she gave me mine many years ago and they've grown like wildfire ever since. When I gave some to Francis at Green harvest, she said they were Welsh Onions.

    http://greenharvest.com.au/SeedOrganic/VegetableSeeds/OkraToOnion.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may  have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive!  Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap.  And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps.  I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation  and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment.  One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap.   As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances).   When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather.  I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap.  It also contributes a tan or brown colour to