PROJECT SCALLION: The Cost of Neglect

When I went out of town last week, I left the horticultural needs of my apartment in the good hands of my friend jash, who has done an absolutely stellar job of keeping my rosemary, thyme, basil, and chives alive. The fact that I even have so many plants is a bit mindblowing to me, but that’s neither here nor there. Unfortunately, jash cruelly neglected my scallions, which had been perched quietly on a window sill, yearning for nothing but water. To jash’s credit, I had drawn the blinds, and thus the scallions were essentially hidden from view of the apartment, but that being said, he is still a scallion murderer through and through as his inattentiveness yielded a veritable scallion GENOCIDE here in Hollywood.
Perhaps it’s all for the best though. The experiment had indeed run its course, and after having used one or two stalks last week in a tuna salad, I came to the following conclusion: scallions DO regrow and DO maintain their flavor. However, it takes quite a while for them to get decent-sized, which can be a problem because ideally, I’d want to always be able to turn to my scallion vase and pluck upwards of five stalks at any given time (some recipes call for a lot). If I were to grow scallions in this way, I’d basically have to just start with a whole bunch — maybe twenty or so — and hopefully that would be enough to maintain a proper cycle wherein by the time I’ve harvested the last scallion, the first ones have totally re-grown. This, of course, would require a larger vase, and honestly, I’m not sure I’m ready to devote such funds to this endeavor. But I’m not counting it out. I need to think this through.
In the meantime, after the jump check out one more photo of the scallions’ dried up roots. It’s horrifying. I added water back into the vase just in case it would solve something, but I think the writing’s on the wall. These plants need to go…

Sadness.