Not many varieties of garlic do well here in SE Louisiana. You have several that do. I would love to have of any of the Early Italian Purple, Inchelium Red, Lorz Italian, Red Toch, or Ajo Rojo. I would like to have some Potato onions and shallots also. I have never seen a potato onion yet. The only alliums I have to offer are some bulbils of Egyptian Walking onions. Promethean Spark; Back in the '20s and '30s Cajun people were being treated pretty badly. Many spoke only French. They would gather in homes and barns and play music and dance. This outlet of expression helped many thousands get through the hard times of the depression and persecution. Today's Zydeco music is a product of this wonderful and vanishing heritage. My family had many talented musicians and singers. Not the least of which was my mother and her beautiful voice. Y'all keep up the good work Promethean Spark! I have a pretty large "HAVE" list. I hope you find some seeds there you like.

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.

Thank-You Silvia.......you are my Heroine ! Downtown Orlando's feed and seed has been repeatedly telling me "a couple more weeks" for onion sets....... I took a drive and visited "your" Winter Garden Feed and Seed on Main St and finally got my onions..... I even showed them your posting/onion photo and they praised your "beautiful presentation"........ doug in downtown Orlando

I'm up on the Caprock, just east of Lubbock. I grow lots of alliums. Chives, garlic chives, elephant garlic, Egyptian walking onions all do well for me, though I rarely eat the garlic chives and elephant garlic. My experience with potato onions is that they produce lots of very small bulbs that we don't really use. Other far southern growers have reported the same results. Kind of the same with every shallot variety that I've tried. In the onion department, I do very well with the intermediate day onions from Dixondale Farms, especially Candy and Superstar. Even the long day Red River performs well for me. We have such intense late freezes here, sometimes onion killing single digits the first week of March, that I have to plant the short day onions too late to really get a good harvest, though I do plant Southern Belle for a very early and tasty harvest of mid-size onions. I used to plant two varieties from seed in the fall for overwintering; Desert Sunrise from Johnny's and the widely available Walla Walla Sweet. I was usually successful with overwintering them, but I gave it up in favor of the ease of using the more expensive transplants from Dixondale. Garlic is one of my favorite things to grow and eat. I have been growing and saving my own planting stock of a locally grown California Early for over eight years. It is very productive here. The rest of my lineup is Cuban Purple ( a beautiful purple red wrapped Creole with larger cloves than the other Creole I tried-Ajo Rojo); Mild French ( a Texas heirloom silverskin with larger cloves than the first silverskin I tried-S&H Silverskin); and Early Red Italian-very similar to California Early, except a few days later and a red tint to the wrappers. These last three came from Filaree Farms up in Washington state and after three years are beginning to settle down and adjust to their new home. Several years ago, I abandoned Inchelium Red, but I didn't give it a fair trial. When I started growing garlic, I planted the last week of September following the advice of Bob Anderson at Gourmet Garlic Gardens in Bangs, Texas. All went well for a few years, but then we had a series of winter in which we had a very cold spell (lows in the teens or single digits) in November or early December and it badly damaged the California Early that sprouts early and makes a lot of vigorous top growth early. I changed my planting date to the first week of November and no problems since. The earlier date would probably work for you. I like Forever Yong's selection of garlic. Another way to find locally adapted garlic is to go your local farmer's market and sample what is offered and get a start of what you like. As for the native, Allium drummondii, I find the bulbs small, hot and bitter-basically inedible, though it is a pretty wildflower or garden subject. Good luck with your allium adventure. Many are very well adapted to this area and they provide a lot of interest before the typical warm season vegetables get ready and year around flavor for the kitchen. KH