Scallions — Allium fistulosum, also sold as green onions, Japanese bunching onions or Welsh onions — are the allium most worth growing as a microgreen. Not because they are the strongest, but because they are the most usable.
What it tastes like
Clean onion, milder than chives, with a crispness chives do not have. That combination is the whole argument: chives give you the flavour as a limp thread, while scallion microgreens give you flavour plus a bit of structure that survives contact with a warm dish.
The habit this crop teaches
Alliums are slow, and a tray gives you a finite number of cuttings before it is spent. The answer is succession: sow a new tray every two weeks rather than waiting for the current one to run out.
This is standard practice for market growers and almost nobody does it at home, which is why home growers experience alliums as "I grew them once and then I had none". Two weeks is short enough that the next tray is coming up as the last one finishes.
It is worth adopting the habit generally — clover and other slow crops benefit from the same treatment.
Growing it
- Slow, and patient. Alliums are not a seven-day crop. Plan for it.
- Multiple cuttings. Unlike most microgreens, which you cut once and clear, scallions can give you repeated harvests from a single sowing if you cut above the growing point.
- Do not overwater. Slow crops in wet substrate are the classic route to mould.
How to use it
- On eggs — scrambled, fried, in an omelette.
- On warm bean and grain dishes, where onion belongs and raw onion would be too harsh.
- On soups and noodles, added at the table.
- Anywhere a recipe says "garnish with spring onion", at a fraction of the sharpness.
One thing to note: the green tops of alliums generally are a source of vitamin C, which is measured and unremarkable. You will find larger health claims attached to onions online; we have written about why that category of claim is worth distrusting.
Timing and variety notes draw on Cooking With Microgreens by Sal Gilbertie and Larry Sheehan.
