Topic: Onions and garlic - how late?

[valentinelow]

Help! I normally plant my onion sets and garlic in the autumn, but for one reason and another have not had time to do it yet.
My question is, how late can I do it? Is the first week of December still OK? (I live in west London, by the way). What is the limiting factor - is it merely whether the ground is still workable and not frozen solid?
Any comments from allotmenteers out there with experience of late autumn planting would be much appreciated...

[Eristic]

I would say plant them as soon as this current cold spell passes. They will take a little longer to root and shoot now due to the soil temperature being lower but as long as the soil is not frozen they should still grow.

[tim]

Garlic's OK till February.

Normal onions don't go in until the Spring, anyway.

Overwintering (Japanese etc) onions - as Eristic says.

[Cuke]

hmpf...Dobies... grumble... >:(

My onions only turned up this week despite having been ordered many moon ago. They'll be in the ground in a few hours but even Dobies own instructions say they should have been planted by now.....

[OllieC]

How strange (& annoying!) for you Cuke. My Dobies ones came ages ago. They were very good quality too. I got swift & Autumn something - the pack of 2. What did you order?

[Robert_Brenchley]

Garlic planted late works, and you still get decent bulbs. I've never had anything worthwhile from onions planted this late though.

[grawrc]

I was intending to plant mine this afternoon, but a friend came round and stayed to chat for a bit. When he left it was almost three and looked as though it was getting dark already so I decided to do some housework instead. Now at 4.25 it's still fairly light.. Ah well..Maybe tomorrow.

[Cuke]

Can't remember what they were Ollie, without the packet in front of me. But it's a bit annoying yeah.

I'll plant them tomorrow morning I'd guess, surely they'll still do something, they must do most of their growing in the spring anyway?

[Multiveg]

Planted some garlic on Sunday. Still got another lot of garlic to plant and some shallots.
Somewhere I read that the traditional day to sow onions is Boxing day? Can't remember if it said that this day also was for planting shallots.

[Lauren S]

I was told by my allotment neighbour, the ideal day to plant is the shortest day, and harvest on the longest day.
I had already planted mine on Saturday  ::)

[Barnowl]

I planted garlic in Christmas week last year, results were tasty and healthy but small. MC55 had the same experience the year before ....

http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,26585.0.html

 .....so I think it isn't just that the weather was poor for garlic this year but may be that the traditional advice (shortest day) isn't ideal for the varieties we are growing nowadays and they like to be in the soil a bit earlier (apart from Solent Wight which the Garlic Farm say does better if planted in January/February).  I've planted in October and will plant more in November, December and January (just the Solent Wight) this season.

Also it appears to be very important to give your garlic a good potassium feed in February / early Spring - please will someone remind me ;D

[Multiveg]

..
Also it appears to be very important to give your garlic a good potassium feed in February / early Spring - please will someone remind me ;D

Put it in the calendar then!

[Kea]

I've already planted two different types of Garlic they've been in about 3 weeks. Today was the day to plant the rest a little delayed because i hadn't prepared that end of the bed. The weather was supposed to be fine and it was but we had heavy rain overnight so the soil (heavy clay) was just too wet.
I grew autumn shallots(expensive ones from GC) and spring shallots last year and the spring shallots (cheap ones from Wilkinson's) and the spring ones gave such a fantastic crop and the autumn ones didn't so this year I'm just planting shallots in spring and twice as many.