h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"An Onion A Day Keeps The Doctor Away"

I love onions and frequently use onions finely minced and uncooked for seasoning on almost any entree.

To avoid crying, First cut off about half an inch at both ends underwater. Most of the outgassing occurs on the first cuts. A pressure release phenomenon. Water absorbs the outgassing.

First thing after the cooking tasks are done, I plant the root end in a gallon flowerpot. Its sufficient to press it root down into the potting soil leaving the cut face exposed and cover with about half an inch of chipper shredder mulch. An immediate watering with 5% plain household ammonia potentiated with trace auxin not only has an antiseptic effect, but also stimulates growth. Typically you'll get an onion about the size of the parent per meristem exposed on the cut face. The other end of the onion goes into the composter.

Onion flowers in the young and tender milk stage (or meristematic stage) make tremendous seasonings for soups and stews, strongly flavored, with a nice granular texture. Scissors are the easiest way to cut them up.

Onions in my garden include the red onion, the yellow onion, the white Onion (rather sour, which distinguishes it from most other onions), the walking onion (much favored for cocktail and pickling onions)[not to be confounded with the multiplying onion which spreads rhizomatously, making robust scallions, rather than by means of layering, like the walking onion, which, rather than flowering bears a cluster of miniature onions in the flowerhead], shallots.

(Garlic doesn't propagate easily from cuttings, unlike onions.)