What To Expect:
the First Year After Planting Your Topsets
After planting your topsets in the fall, they will push roots into the soil and grow little leaves. These leaves will feed the bulbs and allow them to grow a little before winter. Basically, your topsets are getting established. The leaves will die back in the winter and the bulb will remain dormant until late winter/early spring. They will wake up in February (zone 5) and begin to grow their green leaves.
This is their first growing season, and all their energy is focused on bulb growth. They will spend the spring and summer growing roots and leaves to feed the bulbs. By late summer, the bulbs will go into a dormant period. When autumn comes, they will divide if conditions are favorable.
You will not see topsets during this first season of growth. The average size topsets you panted last fall are just too small to grow a topset stalk of their own. The little topset must grow into a bulb first, so it will have enough energy to make its own topsets. There is an exception: if you started with jumbo topsets, they are often big enough, and have enough energy, to make a small cluster of tiny topsets during their first growing season.
The Second Growing Season
Once established, the true character of the walking onion begins to unfold. During their second spring, they begin to grow their first topset stalk (technically, called a "scape"). In May (zone 5) the Egyptian Walking Onion plants resemble beautiful green taper candles complete with a burning flame at the top. Towards the end of spring, the papery sack at the top of the stalk splits open to reveal the topsets inside.
As the topsets mature into the summer, the plants begin to take their first baby-steps, that is if their stalks are long enough, and the topsets are big enough to bend the plants over. When autumn arrives, the plants divide in the ground once again, and the cycle continues. Visit the life-cycle page to read more about the fascinating life-cycle of these remarkable plants.
If the topsets are allowed to take root where they fall, this new generation will start the cycle all over again: growing just roots and leaves their first year, then a topset stalk the second year, and every year after. With each passing season, the plants grow taller and stronger, sending up sturdier stalks and forming topset clusters in a natural range of sizes — some large and heavy, others small and few. Each new plant can, in turn, arch its topsets over to the ground, and continue the outward march of the expanding Egyptian Walking Onion patch.
More on how they walk
In the ground, the bulbs continue to divide, forming a widening clump over time. What began as a single topset becomes a small colony, then a growing patch, each year marking the slow outward movement of the onion’s path.
A Living, Self-Renewing Patch
With each passing year, the harvest grows heavier and more generous. Greens become thicker, bulbs multiply, and topset clusters become more abundant and reliable. The plants grow hardier as well, returning each spring with greater vigor and resilience.
Over time, your planting becomes a living network — a self-sustaining onion trail that renews itself, expands naturally, and grows more impressive with every season. What began as a single topset becomes a walking lineage, quietly stepping forward year after year, writing its story across the garden floor.