Gadenin日本語Get the appA crop that grows when everything else stops
The rhythm of bunching shallot is the opposite of most vegetables. It is planted in autumn, grows and is cut through autumn, winter and spring, and shuts down for summer. That is what makes it valuable: it supplies green onions across the months when the beds are otherwise thin, and it asks for nothing at all through the busiest weeks of high summer.
The whole year turns on two decisions. The first is when to plant, which is governed by soil temperature falling rather than by any date. The second is when to stop cutting and let the plant go dormant, which is governed by the tops yellowing. Get both right and the cycle repeats itself indefinitely from your own bulbs.
The year in phases
Use the table below as the shape of the year rather than a fixed timetable. Adjust it to your own conditions by watching soil temperature and the state of the tops, and the same sequence works in either hemisphere.
| Phase | What the plant is doing | What you do | Decision point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autumn planting | Rooting from the dormant bulb | Plant bulbs six inches (15 cm) apart, tip at the surface | Soil has fallen below 68F (20C) |
| Late autumn | Pushing first tops and beginning to split | Water only if dry; light dressing of feed | Tops reach eight inches (20 cm) before first hard cold |
| Winter | Slow growth, or dormant tops in hard climates | Cut lightly in mild areas; mulch in cold ones | Stop cutting if regrowth stalls in the cold |
| Early spring | Strong regrowth, clump splitting fast | Feed, begin regular cutting, weed the row | Tops firm and eight inches (20 cm) tall |
| Late spring | Peak growth and best quality tops | Cut every two to three weeks, feed after cuts | This is the heaviest harvest of the year |
| Early summer | Tops yellow, reserves moving to bulbs | Stop cutting, stop feeding, stop watering | A quarter of the tops in a clump are yellow |
| Midsummer | Fully dormant, tops dead | Lift clumps, split, cure two to three weeks in shade | Tops fully down and soil dry |
| Late summer | Bulbs dormant in store | Store cool, dry and airy; check for soft bulbs | Wait for soil to cool before replanting |
The two decisions that matter most
Planting into soil that is still warm is the commonest first-year failure. The bulbs sit, fail to root and rot, and the gardener concludes the stock was bad. Push a soil thermometer in at planting depth, or simply wait until the soil no longer feels warm at a spade's depth in the morning, and be prepared to hold the bulbs another fortnight in store if the autumn is late.
Cutting through the yellowing period is the commonest established-bed failure. The plant is trying to move reserves into the bulbs, and taking leaf during those weeks means undersized bulbs that cure poorly and split into fewer offsets next season. The discipline is to stop harvesting while the tops still look partly usable, and to accept a few weeks with no green onions before dormancy.
- Autumn: plant on soil temperature, not date Wait for the soil at planting depth to sit below 68F (20C). Plant point up with the tip at the surface, six inches (15 cm) apart, and mark the row before the tops appear.
- Winter and spring: cut on rotation Cut a third of each clump at a time, one inch (2.5 cm) above the soil, rotating around the bed so every clump gets three or four weeks to recover. Feed after every second or third cut.
- Early summer: stop everything At the first significant yellowing, stop cutting, feeding and watering that clump. Let it dry down completely. The tops dying is the crop working, not failing.
- Midsummer: lift, split, cure Once the tops are fully down and the soil is dry, fork out each clump whole, break it into single bulbs, discard anything soft, and cure in a single layer in shade with air moving for two to three weeks.
- Late summer: store and wait Keep the cured bulbs in net bags or open trays somewhere cool, dark and airy. Check every fortnight and remove anything soft. Replant the largest bulbs when the soil cools.
In hard-winter climates the tops die back in winter as well as summer, giving two dormant periods. Mulch the row two inches (5 cm) deep after the winter tops go over, and pull the mulch back off the necks as growth restarts in spring.
Building a record that becomes your own calendar
The dates in any published calendar are approximations. Yours are not. Write down the date you planted, the date the first tops showed, the date of every cut, the date the tops began yellowing, the date you lifted, and the date curing finished. One season of that gives you a calendar tuned to your own garden, and it removes almost all the guesswork from the second year.
Add the numbers alongside the dates: bulbs planted, bulbs lifted, bulbs kept back for replanting, bulbs lost in curing. The ratio of bulbs lifted to bulbs planted is the health of your stock in a single figure. If it drops from six or more down towards three, the ground is tiring or disease is building, and you should be moving the bed to fresh soil the following autumn.