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When it comes to growing edible plants, my track record isn’t the best. In the last year alone I’ve watched basil and rosemary wilt to death in front of my eyes. Then, my roommates and I naively planted celery in our lead-leached soil only to peer out the window and witness rabbits gobbling up the stalks. Finally, I lost my long-struggling tomato seedling and knew it was time to put the backyard garden I’d dreamed about to bed.
Still, I yearned for fresh herbs and alliums (that wouldn’t wither in my fridge only days after bringing them home from the supermarket) to zhuzh up my tired pandemic meals. As fate would have it, the Instagram algorithm delivered in the form of this Hamama green onion grow kit. I was already a scallion devotee, and the setup seemed intuitive—hard to botch, even. Maybe, I figured, it could make a proud plant parent out of this failed gardener.
You might be wondering, Why order a kit to grow green onions when a mason jar on the windowsill seems to do the trick for everyone else? Well, listed on my résumé of horticultural failures is that one too: In a glass jar, the water grew stinky in a day, the weary onions drooped dramatically, and I knocked the jar from the window’s ledge more than once, coating the floor and my feet with days-old onion water.
As soon as I unboxed my Hamama kit, I was delighted by the straightforward instructions and ease of setup: The whole thing came together in five minutes. I added water to the tray’s fill line and then submerged the included coconut fiber grow mat—a sort of porous pad that optimizes the level of moisture and gives the scallion roots something to cling to. I grabbed several bunches of H-Mart scallions, chopped the green ends up to save for a batch of scallion pancakes, and slotted their white roots into the Hamama tray. I left the apparatus on the counter, where I, true to form, forgot the scallions’ very existence. Almost overnight (okay, fine, after three days), tubular green leaves rocketed up from the bulbs and tapered into delicate, fine tips. One week after planting, they were lush, verdant, and ready to “harvest.”
My apartment-mates and I cooked lavishly with our haul: garnishing tacos and omelets, sautéing and blistering them in oil, and chopping them into salads with herby green goddess dressing. The Hamama kit also allows me to regrow onions multiple times from the same roots, so I’m rewarded with a constant supply of zippy flavor and the culinary freedom to experiment with the versatile scallion. Has the grow kit reinvigorated my dream of a backyard veggie patch? Not yet, but these thumbs are getting greener by the day.