Onion Plants from Cooking Scraps

As an experiment, I have been growing new onions from cooking scraps. From what I understood, the bottom 1/4 or 1/3 of an onion could be sprouted, divided, and planted. Five months later, they would grow new onion bulbs. Here is a visual update on the status of the onion I wrote about in February's Growing from Cooking Scraps post. I dug around the base of the onion today and sure enough, a new bulb is forming! This is a fun and FREE activity to do with kids!

I tried this with about 10 onions. I tried planting the whole base of the onion, and I also tried peeling off the surrounding onion layers, I haven't yet determined if there is a difference in success between the two yet. I can report that when I used the bottom 1/3 of an onion I had better results. The onions with only one start also did better than the onions with two or three starts that had to be split, but perhaps that is because I still need to work on my splitting skills. I'm only two months into the five month wait for the new bulb to develop but if this works, how fantastic to get multiple onions from the one you purchased!