Growing Shallots

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Eight rules for growing family shallots, a variety of multi-pronged onions

Shallot. Zebrune variety

Perhaps the most common onion crop, apart from, of course, the common onion, which many gardeners willingly grow, is shallots.

The cultivation of this culture does not need any special preparation, however, to get a good harvest, you still need to get acquainted with some features.

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Our family has been growing vegetables for over 20 years. Each gardener has his own secrets and best practices, and in this short article I want to share my experience of growing family shallots. For many years of cultivation, we have collected a good collection of large-fruited varieties of this culture - Golden gurme, Kushchevka Kharkivskaya, Kaskad, Kunak, Grasshopper, White Queen, Nikolaevsky Long, Sorokozubka, Old Believer, Chapaevsky, Uralsky-40, Kubansky Kvochka, Starorussky.

Shallot. Banana shallots

But I always prefer the sweet-spicy Zebrune or Banana shallots. This onion is also known as Cuisse de Poulet du Poitou - an early maturing plant, high-yielding, powerful. Produces a lot of tasty dark green subulate feathers up to 65 cm long. The bulbs are beautiful, oval-elongated (10-13 cm in length). Dry scales - red-lilac, bulbs - violet-pink juicy, sweet with a delicate taste, slightly spicy. The variety is good both for the cultivation of turnip onions and for obtaining a green vitamin feather. This onion keeps well in winter and never goes bad.

Poitato chicken thighs are not only a meat delicacy, they are also a variety of family onions. A good, large, unpretentious variety, gives no more than 8 bulbs per nest, but the bulbs themselves are bright red, in the form of a chicken thigh, beautiful and tasty. They grow weighing more than 100 grams.

Shallot. Variety White star

It is a hardy type of shallot onion. Its roots grow better at low soil temperatures, for it + 3 ° C when planting is the optimal temperature. At later dates of planting, shallot germinates more difficult, grows leaves to the detriment of the roots, forms bulbs worse. In addition, podzimny and early planting saves from damage to the onion fly, which comes out of wintering later and is no longer capable of harming well-rooted plants.

We plant uterine bulbs both before winter and very early in spring. Before planting, we prepare the ground in the place where zucchini, pumpkins, peas, tomatoes or cucumbers grew a year ago (i.e. these beds were well filled with manure and chicken droppings). Sprinkle up to 5 kg of furnace ash and 1 kg of double superphosphate over the bed. We process the earth with a walk-behind tractor or dig it up on a shovel bayonet. And the beds are ready to plant onions.

Shallot. Variety White Queen

But first you need to prepare the bulbs - carefully sort them out, making sure that they are all healthy and of the same size. Then soak for a day in ordinary water, peel well, wash and soak again, this time in a 1% solution of potassium permanganate - for 30-40 minutes. After that, rinse thoroughly again and soak in a salt solution (at the rate of 100 g of salt per 10 liters of water) - for 20-25 minutes. Rinse the onions again, place in small boxes and cover with a damp cloth to germinate. And after this preparation, you can start planting.

Just before planting the bulbs, I sprinkle a little more ash on the beds and Fertika complex fertilizer. Then I plant the bulbs in groove rows. The distance between the rows should be 20-25 cm, the depth of the row (hole) should be 2 times the diameter of the bulb.

Onions prepared in this way sprout well and evenly. Care consists mainly in constant loosening and weeding. Water the soil as it dries. We feed 2-3 times with mullein and chicken droppings while the feather is growing. After the growth of the feather stops, we no longer use organic fertilizers, but feed it 2-3 times more exclusively with mineral complex fertilizers. At this time, the bulbs are already beginning to grow and fill. For top dressing we use complex fertilizers "Zdraven" and "Fertika".

Shallot. Variety Kushchevka Kharkiv

When the feather begins to coarse, nothing else needs to be done with the onion except weeding. When 70% of the feather is lodged in July, we start cleaning. We pull out the onion and leave it in the garden for about a week, so that it "comes" and dries. Even if small doji go, then there is nothing wrong with that. As a last resort, they can be covered with foil. Then we transfer it to a dry place, where it finally dries well.

Then we cut off the grown onions, leaving a stem 5-6 cm long, sort by size and quality. We leave the best bulbs for further cultivation (such an onion is called a mother plant), and the rest of the crop goes to the kitchen.

Here are some basic rules for growing large family onions:

First, it is imperative to get rid of acidic soil. To do this, digging or plowing is carried out in the fall, introducing humus and ash (or lime) into the soil. Onions love well-seasoned and loose soil.

Second - planting onions should not be very thick. Planting pattern: 20-25 cm between rows, 15 cm between onions.

The third is to water often, but only in the first half of the growing season, when there is intensive feather growth, and also to prevent weeds from appearing on the bed.

The fourth is to loosen the soil as a crust forms on its surface.

The fifth - and most important rule - is not to delay the landing. It is important! Otherwise, the planting will suffer from onion flies, heat, etc. We plant onions before winter and in March - early April. Other gardeners should be guided by the weather conditions in their area when the soil temperature reaches + 3 ° C after winter.

Sixth - start harvesting the onion after lodging 70% of the feather. In the Kuban, in time it is the beginning of July, in the rest of Russia - the middle of this month or the beginning of August.

Seventh - let the onion crop mature in the garden for several days (at least a week).

Eighth - store the seed material of this onion at a temperature of + 18 ° C, and the onion that will go for food - in a cool dry room at a temperature of from zero to two degrees.

Today we grow and propagate 38 varieties of family shallots. He's all so different: white, yellow, brown, pink, red, purple, burgundy, white-beige, red-brown. And in shape - round, flat-rounded, elongated (banana), in the form of thighs, water lilies, bottles, flat, etc. And his pen is also different. In the multi-bud (it has a lot of onions - up to 10 pieces or more), it is thin, not very long, but very tender, tasty. In dark varieties, the feather is dark green, powerful, and in white and yellow varieties, it is bright green (salad).

Valery Brizhan, experienced gardener

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