Harvesting Shallots

On Sunday I harvested about half of my crop of "Longor" Shallots. I have left some of them in the ground because I judged that they might grow a bit more, but many of the plants were evidently ready. I reckon that Shallots are ready to harvest when their leaves go completely floppy and begin to show a bit of brown. If I had unlimited space I might have left these ones of mine a little bit longer, but I needed to make room for the Cavolo Nero which is growing rapidly.

As I lifted each cluster of Shallots, I separated it into individual bulbs and spread them out to dry in the sunshine, on an old groundsheet.

If the current run of sunshine and high temperatures continues, these Shallots will dry out very rapidly!



I don't know whether it is due to my having used a slightly wider spacing for the Shallots this year or just the weather conditions, but they are significantly bigger than the ones I produced last year. Looking back at a post entitled "Shallots Longor" which I wrote in February, I see that I used a spacing of 20cm between bulbs last year, and 25cm this time,so the increased spacing is more than likely the thing that has made the difference.

Most of mine are destined to be pickled, but I think I will reserve the biggest ones for general culinary use, since we do use quite a lot of Shallots in our cooking.