Any hunt talkers from Walla Walla?

[lodgepoleJoe]

Whatever happened to the delicious walla walla sweet onions? Back in the 80's I remember a guy used to show up around the 4th of July week in front of our local tackle shop and sell bags of walla walla sweet onions out of the back of his pickup. They were giant and were so good you could eat them like an apple. One of our favorite meals back then was beer battered sturgeon and walla walla onion rings. Since then I have bought "fake" ones at different grocery stores but never found anything close. Can you still get these onions or are they extinct?

 

[Brittany Chukarman]

Message fishing4sanity, if he doesn't grow them he'll know who does

 

[lodgepoleJoe]

Thanks, I'll do that...

 

[Clam]

I agree, Walla walla sweets don’t seem as sweet as they were back then. I’ve wondered about that also.

Recently, I have gotten a few really sweet onions from friends that live in Moses Lake. They call them “Sunions”. You can eat them like an apple.

 

[kwyeewyk]

You can definitely still get Walla Wallas, grew some last year, getting ready to sprout some next month.

 

[lodgepoleJoe]

You can definitely still get Walla Wallas, grew some last year, getting ready to sprout some next month.

I should try to get some starts to grow here but I wonder if its the climate and soil there that makes them so good. We should have the same kind of soil here being on the east side of cascades but we're at 5000' and our growing season doesn't start till june. I've always thought that the fake ones could have started as walla wallas but were grown somewhere else.

 

[kwyeewyk]

I bet you could grow some, onions like cooler weather, probably won't get as big, but something about growing them yourself always seems to make them taste better to me. It's hard to know with varieties the further you get from the original line, every breeder makes slightly different selections so over time I guess you'd expect to see some departure from the original, especially when breeding in different areas. I like to start them inside under a light in January and have them about as big around as a pencil by mid April for planting outside. I'm only about 1400 feet, get frost through April usually, sometimes into early May. I mulch them lightly after transplanting, helps them take a little frost.

 

[marshman]

Grow them every year from starts harvested in Walla Walla. The size of softballs and really good.

 

[Clam]

I was in my local Costco (Everett, WA.) and saw that they had Sunions, so I bought a bag. Also, they get sweeter with age.

 

[kwyeewyk]

Whatever happened to the delicious walla walla sweet onions? Back in the 80's I remember a guy used to show up around the 4th of July week in front of our local tackle shop and sell bags of walla walla sweet onions out of the back of his pickup. They were giant and were so good you could eat them like an apple. One of our favorite meals back then was beer battered sturgeon and walla walla onion rings. Since then I have bought "fake" ones at different grocery stores but never found anything close. Can you still get these onions or are they extinct?

Here's some we grew this year, one of my pigs got in the bed and re-arranged them right after we transplanted them, so the spacing got messed up but they still came out looking pretty good. Onion rings are definitely on the menu, wish I had some sturgeon to fry! When the greens in the bed finish seeding we'll start pulling the onions so the greens can make a fall crop, and we'll leave some onions to go to seed next year.

 

[lodgepoleJoe]

Oh man those look good! I did find some starts this spring but ours are just starting to bulb. No sturgeon either so I might have to order some halibut from Randy's alaska fish guy.

 

[Irrelevant]

I think the Walla Walla sweet is a trademarked name, so while you can grow them at your house no commercial grower can sell the exact same sweet yellow onion under the Walla Walla Sweet name unless they are actually grown in the Walla Walla area. We've done half a dozen different varieties of sweet yellows, some are better than others.