Sometime in July, the tops will start to fall & turn brown. Then you can (carefully as to not nick the shallot) use a hand shovel to lift them out of the soil.Gently remove excess soil & place them in a shaded spot to dry & then remove the tops for storage.

Shallots are a great choice for the home gardener as they're not cheap at the store. Be sure to save some to plant next fall!

Humm, I never thought to plant shallots. Maybe next year. I did plant leeks though.

Your shallots have a long way to go. First you will notice the individual shafts dividing into two, and then (hopefully) a second division a few weeks later. At that point the plants will splay out like an open hand and start dying back. I let them stay in the ground until the tops are shriveling, usually late July or early August.

My earliest seed sown shallots are now in the their second division, but the later ones are just now dividing for the first time. The photo shows what the first division looks like.

Thanks for the info. Do more bulbs grow under the soil in the waiting process or am I going to end up with approx 9 bulbs (as I look at my photo above)?

That's probably a good guess, though it could be more. You have three clumps, three shafts each, so a minimum of 18 shallots, probably more like 20-25.

My shallots grow differently than the way planatus describes but maybe that's the difference between seed grown shallots and bulb grown shallots. When I plant a bulb, it will send up a bunch of different shoots all at once and each one of those shoots will then become one shallot. So if your shallots are grown from a bulb, those 9 bulbs you see now may be all that you get.

Here's what my shallots looked like April 30th, the mulch gets in the way but you can sorta see all the different shoots:
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And this is what my shallots look like now, they're getting closer to full size:
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Rodney

This post was edited by theforgottenone1013 on Sat, Jun 22, 13 at 14:01

Rodney, thanks for sharing and nice pics. So I take it that the stalks fall over as a consquence of the bulbs enlarging and pushing up against each other.

I am in zone 6B. For the past several years I have planted shallot sets (bulbs) in my raised beds both in the fall and in the spring. To date, my little experiment shows that in this location the spring planted bulbs seem to grow to a larger size than those planted along with my garlic in October. Has anyone else an opinion on spring vs fall planting in these zone 5 or 6 areas?

njitgrad- That's correct, they fall over naturally and I let the tops die down before I harvest them.

sconticut- I have always planted them in the Fall and had good results but I was planning on experimenting next year by planting some this Fall and some next Spring to see which works better.

Rodney

Rodney,
I will be interested in reading here of your results. Most of the feed stores and old garden centers here sell the bulbs in the sprig.... figured they knew something.
Victor

I grew shallots from bulb last year with good sucess however the bulbs are pricy. I am in Minnesota so fall planting I doubt will work. I want to try these from seed this year. I typically start onions from seed in late February and work them under grow lights till they are ready to go outside. I am wondering if shallots from seed work the same way. If I do start them from seed will they have multiple shallots per plant or only one the first season?