Detailed Guide to Scallion Cultivation Techniques: From Seedling Raising to Harvest Made Easy

Scallion is a perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Allium in the Amaryllidaceae family. It is widely cultivated throughout China, serving both as a common seasoning vegetable on the dining table and as a plant with certain nutritional value. Scallion has strong adaptability, tolerates cold and drought, and is not particularly demanding about soil, though it grows best in loose, fertile, well-drained sandy loam. Its cultivation and management are relatively simple, making it suitable for both home vegetable gardens and field cultivation.

The commonly cultivated scallions mainly include Welsh onion, small scallion (also called fragrant scallion), and multiplier onion. Welsh onion plants are tall, with the white stalk as the main edible part, and are mostly grown by raising seedlings for transplanting combined with earthing up for blanching; small scallion, also called fragrant scallion, is short with strong tillering ability, and can be planted densely and harvested multiple times; multiplier onion mainly reproduces by division, has a fresh fragrance, and is managed more extensively.

When planting scallions, generally the soil is first deeply plowed and prepared with sufficient decomposed organic fertilizer, then beds are made for direct sowing or seedling transplanting. During the seedling stage, the soil should be kept moist, with timely thinning and weeding, and reasonable dense planting should be observed at transplanting. Welsh onion requires earthing up several times during the growing period to promote elongation and thickening of the white stalk, combined with watering and topdressing, mainly with nitrogen fertilizer and appropriately supplemented with phosphorus and potassium fertilizer.

Common diseases of scallion include downy mildew and purple blotch, while pests are mostly onion thrips, leafminers, and root maggots. In production, attention should be paid to crop rotation, timely removal of diseased and residual plants, and the use of targeted pesticides at the early stage of disease onset. In daily management, if yellow leaves and dry tips appear, it is mostly related to improper watering, nutrient deficiency, or root damage, and water and fertilizer should be adjusted in time. At harvest, it can be done in batches according to market demand.