In the early spring of 2021 I planted a small row of shallots. The 2021 gardening year, particularly for growing anything in the allium family, was pretty much a bust for me. Whether it was the composition of my soil, the unusually wet weather or my lack of fertilizing (not unusual), I never did collect on the promise of a shallot harvest. In fact, the few onions and large number of garlic I had planted also looked measly.

So I did something radical: I left all the alliums. Just left them there to do as they please. And their pleasure was to wither their leaves and be considered forgotten for the rest of the summer. Since I don’t ever plant anything else in that section of the garden anyway, I did, in fact, promptly forget about them. Round about October, though, tiny shoots began emerging from that patch of ground. All my different alliums were coming alive again.

But right before winter? I’d learned from previous seasons that that’s quite alright, at least with garlic. A bit of leaf or straw mulch over the growing shoots will protect them from a bit of winter harshness—and thanks to climate change, our winters in southern New England are not as harsh as they used to be.

Shallots?

It’s late June and the shallots, garlic and I-can’t-remember-what-else alliums are winding down their growing season. Some are just withering their thin leaves, laying themselves down in long layers on the ground. And some are beginning to produce pompon-like tufts of flowers at the very top of a tall stem. The garlic that I know is definitely garlic are producing flowering tips that are curling down and up and around—otherwise known as the garlic scape. I’ve written about these garlic scapes before. Delicious!

Knowing that the scape-topped item is garlic, I left that alone and harvested one clump of each unidentified allium. Of the two items, I’m having a hard time figuring out which is what. The smaller item has the brownish-red skin of a shallot, but it’s so small. It’s also the one that hasn’t flowered at all yet and is beginning to wither. The larger of the two is the right size for shallots, but not the right color. The other characteristic of a shallot—the fact that they have individual parts that bunch together—like a head of garlic has individual cloves—wasn’t happening on this harvested item, either.

Or Garlic?

Not knowing which was what, I decided on a taste test. There was no mistaking the strong raw-garlic flavor of the smaller item. And in the photo you can see the beginnings of the tall flowering stalk forming within the bulb. This garlic may either be wild garlic or, more exciting yet, a garlic plant that grew from all those garlic scapes I let go to seed last year.

As for the larger item, it had a very mellow onion flavor. But is it a shallot? Undecided. It has the mellow onion flavor of a shallot but not the bunching bulbs growing from one plant. Also, it’s not the right color. It may be a few weeks before we figure out this mystery.

I have two options for next year: I will either harvest ALL the alliums this year, dig up the area completely and plant my alliums in labeled rows from now on. Or, a friend just suggested growing onions as perennial onions and just removing the tops to use as scallions. That suggestion is a mind-blowing idea that I am really beginning to like.