over winter onions etc

[scott mathieson]

hi

this is my first year growing got an allotment plot in February which was in a grass topped field. i put in some garlic shallots and onions start of march, they died off a bit early June when we had about a months worth of rain in a day. they came back fine accept the shallots which were pretty backward and have never got beyond shoots of about 9 inches, the garlic is about a foot and a half tall but no sigh of any bulbing. the onions have put a bit of spurt on in the last few weeks and are fine.

should i go for planting shallots and garlic over winter and when would expect to have a crop? and is over wintering onions a good idea do they come up much earlier and do they still store.

i would like to grow a few types of garlic as i do like a bit of garlic and since they were first shoots to come through on the plot i have developed a soft spot for them.

[bluemoon]

Overwintering onions do store, but not for as long as the spring planted ones, you can expect them a month or two earlier, but because they start to bulb up in late spring you can begin to pull the occasional one once your stored ones are finished. This is just my own experience but, unlike seeds, - where it really doesn't matter if you pay £2.50 for a packet from one of the big name catalogues or 50p a packet from Netto, they're still the same and just as good, - I've found that good quality onion sets do make a huge difference to the size and quality of the crop, so buy them from somewhere reputable. Same with shallots, though it doesn't seem to be quite so important with garlic and for the past year or two I've kept a couple of bulbs back and used those. Garlic needs the cold to make it 'break' (at least ten weeks' worth) so it's best to plant it in autumn, even spring planted bulbs need a good cold snap to do well, but at least part of this can be provided by storing them somewhere cold before planting.

[gojiberry]

Shallots are normally planted on the shortest day and harvested on the longest day (that's the theory). So you don't normally plant them in the autumn. Over wintered onions will definitely give you an earlier crop and I usually use them straight from the plot and don't bother trying to store them. I like to plant my garlic about Oct time, I also plant some in the spring but they tend to stay as a single bulb.

Ian

[bubblewrap]

I over winter broad beans which usually crop early - mid May.