Shallots-Need storage/planting instructions

16 years ago

Having grown the yellow potato onion for years with great success I plunged into shallots this year with more success than I ever imagined. I purchased some seeds which I grew in my greenhouse. In the garden they produced mostly single bulbs this year, a few doubles, and are a yellow color.

I also purchased several little bags of shallot bulbs at Walmart and these produced clusters of purple bulbs, pretty good sized, some up to 1 1/2" diameter.

Plenty bulbs to eat, plenty more for next years crop. I am in zone six, mid to late October sees winter setting in with lots of snow ice etc. We set out tomatoes about May15 to 21st. I have typically set out my yellow potato onions along with my garlic and catawissa onions in the fall, with

minimum cover on the bed, and had great success doing so.

Can I do the same with the shallots and expect a good healthy crop in the spring? If this won't work, how can I store the bulbs till spring?

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Comments (6)

korney19
16 years ago
Larry, you can do the same as if it were garlic or overwintered onions. I have some shallots that I forgot to harvest a year or 2 ago and they just keep multiplying in a pile, even without any soil covering them. They lasted thru Buffalo winters so no hardiness problems. What started out as about 8 shallots just inside the edge of a section of raised bed about 3ft now must be at least a hundred. Some are even putting out seed heads.

Mark
patty4150
16 years ago
Might I ask how to get large (ie decent sized) bulbs with shallots? Although I always get multiple bulbs, they are never nearly as big as store bought. And, they are still 'green' partly up the stem unlike the bulbs you buy at the grocer's.

Perhaps I am harvesting them too soon? Perhaps there are soil requirements I am not aware of?

Good to know when to plant them though, I never knew that. Thanks for starting the thread.

-Patty
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Thanks for the information. Can alliums that have not started to die back be pulled and successfully cured now or is the water content just too high at this point? I started transplanting last evening from my ancillary beds. I made it through the shallots getting all the dirt I could. I know I lost a few plants as I did not dig deep enough to get all the roots. I will take extra care to protect the roots from sunlight. Details on specific varieties at end of post. Since transplanting will set them back so much, I will cover them with a shade cloth and make sure to irrigate and give them extra attention to help them recover. With the multiplying onions and shallots I am not so concerned with getting a edible harvest as much as getting enough to replant for the fall for next year. I have sort of written this year off for eating from the garden until after all the work is done in the backyard. Alliums always seem to fade here in July. I know it is related to the day length, but in the years of drought the harvest always seems to come a few weeks earlier (last year a full month) and if it rains I seem to get an extra week or two so hopefully the extra protection will allow the transplants to recover somewhat. I pulled a few of the smallest garlic plants and the cloves are of a usable size. I am thinking about culling the smallest plants which usually have the smallest heads and curing them. That would bring me down to about 140 heads of garlic to transplant and at least twelve of each variety. Even with a high transplant failure rate I should have enough to replant and the culls should provide garlic for the next year. The Prince de Bretagne Shallots are doing so poorly (very little top or bottom growth) in my first year growing them that I am confident I got all the roots of about a dozen plants. The Griselle Shallots had a larger root system and I had to make a decision for a few plants on which one to disturb the roots of. The bulb size is actually decent on the disturbed plants and if I could cure them so they would last to the fall planting the size would be similar to the size shallots that were planted. The Frog's Leg Shallots (Red) were monsters when I planted them. A few of these are likely lost as the roots seem to run very deep. These seem to be dividing very nicely with each planted shallot being 6 or more small sized shallots. Several clumps had soft rot so hopefully the rest will survive. I will keep these in pots even afterwards as I do not want to introduce a rot disease into the new garden. These will continue to be isolated for another year. Today I hope to tackle Winter Onions. Only the best clump as a few have started topsetting and I should be able to use those to get the bed reestablished. Also I hope to transplant some potato onions into a stack of spare plastic nursery pots using the same procedure as the shallots. And finally move the best two babbington leeks. These have done poorly for me so far, but better each year. I want to keep a couple around for another year or two to see if the pattern continues or at some point their performance levels off.
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Bill, for #1, you can flip a coin as to if I'm planting too early or too late. Those shallots, 42 Pikants and 23 Goldens, cost zero. They were leftovers at Jung's and should have ended up in their compost bin by now. They were in packages of 10 and perhaps only 3 or 4 were still alive in each. Sorted through about 25 bags to pick out the good ones. Did the same last year but on a smaller scale just to see what happens. Most were shaded out by tomatoes but the ones that survived went into dormancy last fall and resumed growth this spring. Resulted in the biggest shallots that I've ever seen! Those were already dead and done a week ago. Therefore, when given the same opportunity, I decided to give them a proper area to grow. Several good rains since and I've got about 15-20 up in 8 days. For #2, I indeed would normally cure and hold the Goldens until garlic planting time. I haven't taken up the 2004 fall-planted Goldens yet. Despite the hotter season, they are still green as I've given them their share of water through the drought. Perhaps not going to get much larger but no need to lift them yet. None are going to be overly huge but I only had large bulbs to plant back after too much sharing! And #3. If I had my druthers, I'd wait until spring to plant any Golden shallots here. More than once I've lost half of them for no particular reason in an ordinary winter. Nothing as disastrous as the potato onion loses but annoying anyway. Due to possible changing plans for 2006, the Goldens which were planted a week ago may be it for that variety. I'll mulch thick but loose using whole maple and oak leaves rather than shredded. That way, they won't be so apt to form a solid frozen mat. That effort will be to hopefully save most of the Pikants rather than the more common Goldens. Martin
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Violet_Z6
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Check with your state's Extension Service. Each county should have it's own Cooperative Extension Office which provides free publications and information for the asking. They will have valuable vegetable/gardening tables available specifically for your area determined by universities and horticultural research scientists who have collected data from growing those crops in your state. Your tax dollars are already paying for this service so you may as well get some use out of it.

Vegetable Planting and Planning Calendar for Missouri (download the pdf) complete with spring and fall planting dates (underneath the spring planting dates for appropriate crops), how much to plant per person, etc. They can also tell you the average last frost date for your area and ideal planting times for specific crops and varieties in your area.

See how detailed this example is:

{{gwi:4005}}
larryw
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks to all for the replies. By golly, if they will handle
Buffalo winters they sure ought to make it here!

In regards to growing shallots in Southern California, I would think there would be absolutely no risk in fall planting except that they might just choose to grow all winter. I have fall planted my garlic, yellow potato onions, and catawissa walking onions for many years. There have been several occasions of a very mild early winter in which they grew up to 6" tall before a hard freeze killed off the tops. Then, in the spring, they regrow and make a nice plump crop. Rarely does spring planting ever yield much of a crop. My greenhouse sprouted shallots didn't get over 3/4" in size and only a very few multiplied in the ground. But if all goes well, I'll bet I get a great crop
next year with a fall planting, as Mark has suggested.
korney19
16 years ago
Here's some shallots from a couple years ago, one I peeled & divided for detail, plus some topsets from walking onions and other alliums:

{{gwi:83307}}

I think there's a really blurred fine line between shallots and potato/multiplier onions--I had some from a very old local nursery marketed as Golden Shallots or Dutch Golden Shallots I think, plus some called Red Shallots. And I also had some from Gurney's--I don't think they bother naming them.

Pinetree Garden Seeds sells shallots too, and they kinda lump them all together as pretty much the same thing. I grew their shallots about 5-6 years ago and they were smaller and more elongated like the "frogleg" style, with almost copper colored wrappers.
franktank232
16 years ago
Are shallots like onions that if you grow from seed, you'll get bigger "bulbs" vs. buying sets?

Shallots-Need storage/planting instructions

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