Shallots
(Allium cepa ascalonicum)
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Shallots fall somewhere between vegetables and condiments; one can make onions a dish unto themselves, but it's hard to imagine serving shallots as a distinct dish (though some include
them whole in stir fries). Whatever, they are a cooking, and thus gardening, essential.
In reality, a shallot is (as its "scientific" name suggests) just a special kind of onion--one with "more interesting" flavors (as one source puts it) than standard bulb onions. They
are best and most productive fall-planted for overwintering (best with at least some protective mulch) with harvest the following autumn.
From a French herb and spice company's web site:
There are two types of shallots: the gray shallot and the pink, or "Jersey" shallot. The former has a long bulb covered with thick gray skin, from which it gets its
name, and a white/purplish flesh. The latter is divided into several types all having a copper tint including long shallots, with yellow or purple bulbs with a strong flavor;
half-length shallots, pinker or redder with a fruity flavor; and round shallots with a mild flavor.
Many aficionados hold that the gray is the only "true" shallot, but--as you see--even the French are not adamant on that distinction. The gray is commonly held to be somewhat better
for culinary purposes, but its drawback is that it is not a long keeper, whereas the red (or rose or pink or yellow) kinds usually are long keepers, good for possibly up to a year in ideal
conditions.
We are making our varietal choices based on the offerings of a regional seed house that is to some extent a specialist in (among other things) shallots. We will of course trial the
Gray type, as well as the Dutch Yellow, which is more pungent and correspondingly an excellent keeper--though, like all "pungent" shallots and shallot
cousins, it loses its pungency and sweetens up nicely when cooked a little. (We will, of course, use up the Gray first.)
Planting and Growing
Shallots are normally grown from small starter shallots: there is now true seed available, but it is all hybrid, whereas once you get shallots growing in your garden, you have them
forever by just saving out a small part of each year's crop as next year's starters.
Timing
Choose carefully when you intend to plant, for seed shallots are living things, not dried seeds in a packet, and need to be delivered only shortly before planting time. In
this climate, we are much better off using fall planting for overwintering and harvest in late summer or early fall of the following year. The specific advice on the page linked below is
that "planting 4-6 weeks before hard winter comes is about right." Regrettably, "hard winter" is less than definite as a guideline; still, daytime highs herabouts do not typically go much
below 40° F. till about the 1st of December, so we reckon planting out around November 1st ought to fill the bill in this region.
Planting Out
In our opinion, it would be fatuous of us to set forth the somewhat complicated and detailed instructions for dealing with shallot-growing when an excellent and regionally oriented set
is already available on line. Here is a link to the on-line information from Irish Eyes. But
that information, copious as it is, still leaves the gardener one other decision to make.
That decision is how much seed shallot is wanted for the number of plants to be grown, for seed shallots are sold by weight, not count. A pound of seed shallots is said to
plant 15 feet in a row at a spacing of 4 to 6 inches (that is, 2 or 3 to the foot), which translates to 30 to 45 plants to the pound; for a first season, it is probably as well to be
conservative and use the figure of 30 to the pound.
Of course, you also need to know how many plants you intend. You can, as a rough estimate, figure that shallots will grow about 5 or 6 times what you use planting them. As to space
requirement, Jeavons, in his deep-bed book, set
4 inches as the spacing; recall that in a deep bed, one usually plants on sort of triangular or diamond block patterns, rather than in rows. More conventional advice, for gardeners who do
not use deep-dug or raised beds, is 4 to 6 inches of spacing in rows 18 inches apart. (That may give you a clue as to why deep-bed gardening is so much more productive for the square
footage of garden.)
More
Relevant Links
Besides any links presented above on this page, the following ought to be especially helpful.
Odds and Ends
Biology
Shallots are a variety of that general class we call "shallots", which all are members of the Alliaceae family, the alliums (till recently called the Lilliaecae
family). Besides such obvious relatives as leeks, scallions, and garlic, the shallot's kin also include lillies and hyacinths.
History
Shallots are apparently not found anywhere wild, and so must have originated through human breeding from other shallot-family members, They are thought to have originated in ancient
Ashkelon, a city in Palestine--where a Ms. Delilah once famously barbered a Mr. Samson--hence their name ascalonicum. There is evidence that they were a common ingredient in
ancient Egyptian cooking; certainly they were widely grown in both Greek and Roman gardens. The varieties that we use today are probably more or less the same as those used thousands of
years ago.
Envoi
Tennyson wrote a well-known poem, "The Lady of Shallot", that has nothing whatever to do with shallots the
vegetable, and whose mention is thus always good for a crude, Philistene laugh.
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