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This is the single decision that separates a Welsh onion patch that lasts from one that disappears in a month. The plant grows from a basal plate at the very bottom of the shank, and as long as that plate and its roots stay in the ground the leaves regrow. Pull the plant and you take the plate with it, which is fine for an annual scallion but wasteful for a perennial clump.
Cut with a sharp knife or scissors about one to two inches (2.5 to 5 cm) above where the roots start, leaving a short stub of white. Cut lower and you take out the growing point and the plant does not return. Cut higher and you leave usable shank in the ground and the regrowth is coarser. Aim for the stub being about the height of your thumbnail.
Cut in the morning while the leaves are turgid. Midday cutting in hot weather leaves the stub sitting open in the sun and the regrowth is noticeably slower.
How fast it comes back, and how many times
Regrowth in warm weather is fast. Expect visible new green from the cut stub within four to seven days and a usable onion again in three to four weeks. In cool weather it stretches to six or eight weeks, and in the middle of winter it more or less stops until the light returns.
You get three to five good cuts from one plant in a growing season before the regrowth thins and turns wiry. That is when the plant needs a rest, a feed, or dividing. Feed a liquid nitrogen feed after every second cut, because you are removing all the leaf and the plant has to build it again out of stored reserves and whatever the roots can find.
| Cut number | Time to next cut | Quality | What to do after |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Three weeks in warm weather | Best, thick and tender | Water in well |
| Second | Three to four weeks | Almost as good | Liquid feed |
| Third | Four to five weeks | Slightly thinner | Liquid feed and top dress |
| Fourth and fifth | Five to six weeks | Thin and stronger tasting | Rest the clump or divide it |
When to take the whole plant instead
There are times to lift rather than cut. When a clump has crowded itself into a dense mat of pencil thin shanks, lifting the whole thing, splitting it and replanting the best pieces is both a harvest and a repair. When you want the full blanched shank you built by earthing up, you have to lift, because that white is below soil level and cutting at the crown means digging anyway.
Lift by loosening the soil alongside the row with a fork first, then drawing the clump up by hand. Yanking a blanched shank straight out of a ridge snaps it at the point where it went soft, and you lose the best part of it in the soil.
Judging the right size, and what happens if you wait
Overwaiting costs you less with this crop than with almost anything else in the garden, which is why it is such a forgiving thing to grow. A Welsh onion left uncut for two extra months is coarser and stronger but still entirely usable, and one hard cut resets it.
- Look for pencil thickness A shank the thickness of a pencil, roughly a third of an inch (8 mm), is the sweet spot for eating raw. Thinner is fine but there is little of it, thicker gets fibrous in the outer layers.
- Do not wait for a bulb It will never make one. Welsh onion swells slightly at the base and stops. If you are waiting for it to bulb up you are just letting the leaves get tough.
- Watch for the flower stalk A round, hollow stalk with a swelling near the top means the plant is running to flower, usually in spring. The shank goes hard and hollow around it. Cut the stalk out at the base as soon as you see it and the plant returns to leaf.
- Cut hard before hard frost In cold areas take a heavy cut before the ground freezes and mulch the crowns. Leaves left standing through a hard winter turn to mush and sit on the crown.
- Take a light cut all winter in mild areas Where the ground does not freeze solid you can keep cutting through winter, just take less each time and expect six to eight weeks between cuts.
Keeping it after cutting, and what to note down
Cut Welsh onions keep about a week in the refrigerator standing in a jar with an inch of water and a loose bag over the tops, and roughly ten days wrapped in a damp cloth. Blanched white shank keeps less well than green leaf because the soft tissue bruises, so use that part first. Chopped green tops freeze well in a bag and go straight into cooking from frozen, which is the most useful thing to do with a heavy cut.
Keep a note of the date of each cut and which clump it came from. After one season that list shows you your real regrowth interval, which varies more by garden than any book will tell you, and it stops you cutting the same clump twice while another one stands untouched. Recording the date you first saw a flower stalk is worth as much, because it repeats within a week or two every year.