Garlic and shallots here in Virginia are usually planted for me in the mid October to mid November timeframe, though I usually shoot for the beginning of that time because I want to get them growing some before I mulch them for winter. Certainly for garlic you break apart the heads of garlic into cloves and plant them - you can find more details easily online. For shallots and potato onions( somewhat related to shallots), it is individual bulbs that you plant. If you plant a large shallot bulb, then at harvest (probably sometime in June for here in Virginia) then at harvest you could have six or more, even up to 12 or 15 individual new bulbs. Something I didn't understand so well at first is that these new bulbs are usually much smaller than the originally planted bulb. So what you do is replant all those smaller bulbs the next fall, and they develop into nice big shallots like you originally planted. Since it is a two year cycle, what I recommend is buying you lot of starting shallots two years in a row so each year you are planting plenty of the large bulbs. Then every year you will have lots of the small ones for seed and large ones for eating. Potato onions work much the same way, though you tend to get more uniformly sized new onions each year. Can't really help you with the seed and traditional onion issues - I'm just not compelled to grow them when I only have the limited garden space of a typical half acre neighborhood lot, though I eat my own garlic year round.

Thank you lots Dr Bear! What varieties of garlic and shallots do you recommend for VA? Or are they not as particular about day length as onions?

Not a day length concern. Choose varieties you like. My typical preference is very large cloves, so I definitely have lots of elephant garlic (though not really garlic and much milder than a good garlic I just use lots of it!). Other varieties with large cloves, Music, Spanish White, California Early, and I have several others.

Don't you also have to worry about Hardneck vs Softneck based on where your garden is located ???

I grow some of each - they all seem to do well here. I get lots and lots of scapes that I use extensively during the spring in all sorts of dishes from the hardnecks. The softnecks don't offer that, but they make really nice, very large heads, with lots of cloves, and you can do the corny things like braiding them, if that's something you like.