SHALLOTS - why flowering?

[tim]

Planted 25/3 - kept watered - now have flower heads but no bulbing.

First time thus.

?? please....

Tim

[tim]

[goodlife]

Tim...I'm in a same 'boat'!

My shallots have never ever flowered before neither, grown them for yeeeeeears from multiplied bulbs and now I can see several flower heads poking their heads up.
It must be something with the weather that has tricked them to flower.
If the flowers set seed, I'll be trialling growing them that way too..

[galina]

Kelly Winterton (who is very interested in flowering shallots/potato onions and in breeding from their seeds) has come to the conclusion that autumn planted ones have a tendency to flower, whereas spring planted not so much.  Now if we look at spring this year, it has been colder than most years.  It is even still cooler now than average.

Now if it is correct that a cold spell triggers flowering, then I think there is our answer.  Especially nights are still very cold even now, barely above frost.  It makes sense to me anyway. 

I have no flowers on my ordinary shallots, but plenty of flowers on my shallots which were grown from seed originally.

Tim, if you don't want to produce shallot seeds, whip the buds off quick and all the remaining energy will go into bulbing.  There is still time for the bulbs to grow.   

Goodlife, it is good fun to grow from seed and produce your own, uniquely adapted, strain of shallot.  Mine have gone from strength to strength, not very impressive to start with, but this year for the first time I have ten split offs from one bulb and the bulbs are larger than most  shallots too.  Growing from seed certainly rejuvenates a strain of shallot and many garden shallots will have picked up virus diseases, which get cloned down the line as we grow from the same material time and again. 

Two sides of the same coin really.   

[gray1720]

I have no problem with my autumn-planted shallots, but a number of my spring-sown onions are bolting, so I suspect galina may have the right idea.

Adrian

[sparrow]

Thanks galina. My autumn planted sets are flowering and I wasn't sure why.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I've got buds on autumn planted shallotts and two varieties of spring-planted potato onions. Shallotts are a form of potato onion. It would be worth planting the seed and seeing what came; I intend to. I planted Green Mountain seed this year, but rather late, and it's still tiny. Next year I'll start it early on the windowsill.