Shallot
Allium cepa var. aggregatum
Clustering gourmet allium — guards carrots but shuns peas and beans.
- Type
- Vegetable · Grown as an annual
- Botanical family
- Allium (onion family)
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Watering
- Low–moderate
- Soil
- Fertile, free-draining
- Feeding
- Bulbs & roots
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Season
- Cool Season
- Harvest type
- Single Harvest
- Start from
- bulb_tuber
- Germination temp
- 46–68°F
- Min soil temp
- 43 °F
- Photoperiod
- long day
- Sow direct
- 28 days before the last spring frost
- First harvest
- 90 days after the last spring frost
- Harvest ends
- 30 days before the first fall frost
- 100 d Harvest
- Plant spacing
- 7.1 in
- In-row spacing
- 5.9 in
- Between rows
- 11.8 in
- Square-foot density
- 9 per square
- Sow depth
- 0.8 in
- Root system
- A bulb with fine roots beneath it
- Working depth
- 4–10 in
- Can reach
- 16 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 3–6 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
Roots thread down from the base plate each season and are shed each season, and they go no further out than the leaves. Everything the bulb will store for next year is gathered in that narrow circle before the foliage yellows, which is why cutting the leaves early costs a flower.
The habit is Shallot’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by Pet Poison Helpline.
The Pet Poison Helpline Onions page names the genus Allium and lists Shallots among the plants it covers, naming both dogs and cats. Cornell names only cattle, horses and children, and the ASPCA Onion row is the plain species Allium cepa rather than this variety.
- When
- Autumn or late-winter planted sets mature in mid-summer, roughly 20–26 weeks after planting (90–120 days for spring plantings). Harvest when roughly half to three-quarters of the foliage has yellowed and toppled.
- What to look for
- Tops yellowing and falling over naturally, the original set having split into a clump of 4–12 bulbs, and the outer skins starting to color and papery-dry at the soil surface. Don't bend the tops over yourself — let them fall on their own.
- How to harvest
- Ease each clump loose with a fork on a dry day and lift it whole, shaking off soil gently — bruised bulbs won't store. Leave the roots and tops attached for curing; separate the individual bulbs only after they've dried.
- How often
- One harvest per season, all lifted together once tops fall. You can pull the odd clump early as "green shallots" for fresh use from early summer, but only fully matured, cured bulbs will store.
- Storing the crop
- Cure for 2–3 weeks spread in a single layer somewhere warm, dry, and airy (outdoors in sun in dry spells, or a greenhouse bench/covered rack). Once necks are tight and skins rustle, trim tops and roots and store in nets or shallow trays at cool room temperature — good shallots keep 6–9 months, often longer than onions. Save the best bulbs for replanting.
- Onion fly & leek moth Maggots burrow into the base of onions, leeks, and garlic; leaves yellow and droop. Grow alliums under insect mesh and rotate to fresh ground each year.
- Thrips Minute slender insects that leave silvery flecking and distortion on leaves and flowers in hot, dry spells. Keep plants watered and use blue sticky traps under glass.
- Root & crown rot Roots or crown turn brown and mushy in waterlogged soil or compost; the plant wilts even when wet. Improve drainage, water less, and pot up only into free-draining mixes.
- Rust Orange-brown powdery pustules on leaf undersides, weakening the plant over the season. Remove affected leaves, avoid overhead watering, and clear all debris in autumn.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Onion fly & leek moth
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Thrips
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Damsel bug NabidaeHunts Thrips
A slender, mantis-armed bug that grabs aphids, small caterpillars, and thrips in low crops and meadowy edges. Leave a strip of unmown grasses and flowers for it to overwinter in.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Thrips
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Thrips
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Thrips
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Thrips
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Onion fly & leek moth
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
Plant one shallot bulb and it splits into a whole clustered handful.
Green-leaved vegetables, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com