Science at Home: Growing Green Onions Experiment

Green onions, scallions, spring onions – they have many names. Have you ever grown them in your kitchen? Try this fun growing green onions experiment. It’s an easy way to do science at home.

Growing Green Onions Background

When you cook with green onions, do you use both the green and the white part like most chefs and recipes suggest? That’s what we used to do. One day I saw some green onions sitting in a water glass at a friends’ house. At first, I just thought they were keeping them nice that way.

Then, my friends told me a neat trick. You can cut off just the green part of the green onion and the plant will grow back.

Naturally, we started doing this. Our first attempt was all right. My husband placed the green onions in a glass and added some water. We cut the green parts off as we needed them for cooking. The onions did indeed grow back. They were much paler than before and the water started to get a bit yucky – bacteria filled.

So, we tried again with a new batch of onions. This time my husband and son planted them in dirt. We also make sure they get plenty of light. If you don’t have enough sunlight, you can place them under a grow light {available at a hardware store}.

They are doing much better in the dirt and are still bright green. {And we have a few little surprise plants growing in our dirt.}

Growing Green Onions Experiment

Turn the regenerative nature of green onions into a simple science experiment.

Cut the onions {and use for cooking}. Measure the height of the cut onions. Record.

Each day {or every few days}, measure the height of the plants. You can graph the height over time.

In addition to seeing the cut green onions grow, you’ll also observe new shoots pop up from the plants.

 

Science at Home – Growing

Here’s the third episode in our Science at Home series co-hosted with Maggy from Red Ted Art and Life at the Zoo and others.

Find more information and links to all the growing projects at Life at the Zoo.

More Science Fun

• Watch our 2nd episode in the Science at Home series and take on our bridge building challenge.
• The A to Z Science series for toddlers and preschoolers. Easy science activities to do with young children. I include some background info and questions to get you started.
• Try these experiments perfect for toddlers and preschoolers.
• Join the Science for Kids Community on Google+. Share your hands-on science activities and be inspired by others.

Linking up here.