One Spent Onion Turned Into a Whole Bushel Basket

24 pounds of fresh red onions from a pantry scrap

Whenever I bring it up, people almost always ask: “But how big is the actual yield?” My answer? It depends, but it’s always significantly more than what I originally paid for.

Take my recent red onion harvest, for example. What you see here is a little over 24 pounds of crisp, beautiful red onions. The crazy part? They all originated from a single, lonely onion that sprouted in my pantry a couple of springs ago.

Instead of tossing it in the compost, I tucked it into the soil, let it do its thing over the summer, and collected the seeds from its beautiful globe-like flowers in the fall. I sowed those exact seeds around Christmas, and by May, I had two 12-foot rows of sweet, vibrant red onions ready to pull.

Considering red onions usually run about $1.50 a pound at the store, that’s roughly $36 worth of fresh produce for the grand total of zero dollars. If you ask me, that’s a dang good return on investment.

Looking Ahead (and Learning as We Go)

The cycle doesn’t stop here. I already have a batch of yellow onion seedlings getting cozy in the greenhouse. In just a few weeks, they’ll be transplanted into the ground for a mid-to-late October harvest.

Looking even further ahead, the meteorologists are pointing toward an El Niño pattern for our next winter cycle. For us here in San Diego, that generally means a warmer, wetter winter. If the weather cooperates, my plan is to direct-seed outdoors in January and let Mother Nature handle the watering, hopefully setting us up for a super-sized harvest by late spring. (Of course, gardening in changing weather is always a bit of a gamble, but hey, that’s half the fun.)

Want to Try It Yourself?

Onions are just the gateway crop. There are plenty of fruits and vegetables sitting in your kitchen right now that are just waiting for a second life in the dirt.

If you want to save a few bucks and try this in your own backyard, check out my Grocery Store Garden Guide. It breaks down exactly what grows best in our region, a few of our favorite growing hacks, and (just as importantly) which store-bought scraps are actually worth your time and which ones you should just leave in the compost bin.