Shallot harvesting time

A strange thing happened with my shallots this season....my own reselected strain grew a lot, lot bigger than they ever have before, even bigger than the ones I acquired from Dave Thornton. It's almost as if they realised they were on borrowed time and had to perform this year or else!

They're now drying off on this mesh rack. The ones at the top of the frame are my own strain and those at the bottom from the 'DT' bulbs. I still have 50+ of my own bulbs to dig up and harvest and I have some clonkers in amongst them. As long as they round up nicely during the ripening process all should be good. I now leave all the foliage on until it dies back. The bulbs will all have flat faces on them where they've been in contact with their neighbours. I'm assured they will round up during the drying out. I also no longer press the developing bulbs apart in early May. I always thought I was doing good by helping them grow apart from the other bulbs they were touching but now I think it just causes them to stop growing in size.














I also have a row of 'Longor' to harvest which is a french longue type. When I saw them growing in the kitchen garden at Doddington Hall last summer I thought they had potential to be a show variety, and so far so good. They've also grown into large bulbs albeit with a more elongated shape. I know a similar variety 'Jermor' has won at the highest level so it'll be interesting to see how I do with these.

Meanwhile this wooden planking frame that I grew some of my shallots in (with mixed success.....I should have planted the DT bulbs in my more established onion bed) will be revamped with some general fertilisers and planted up with some french beans. These should be fruiting in time for the August/September shows.