Thickneck, splitting and shank

...sound like a firm of bailiffs, along the lines of Sue, Grabbitt and Runne. They are definitely bad news, but for onions. And our onions have suffered from all three this year. We have had a bumper crop of enormous onions, but whether they will keep, as last year's crop did, until the end of the following May, is another matter.

We planted 250 gm each of sets of Stuttgart Giant (Stuttgarter Reisen) on 26th November last year to overwinter, and Sturon on 14th March this year. I was still searching for the elusive Hercules, an absolute star two years ago - good tasting, big onions that did not produce a single flower, that stored, hanging in the cool, until we ran out the following March, and a Gardening Which recommended variety. In a fit of madness I bought 500gm of Centurion sets, GW Best Buy described as "mild" - as many sets again as we had already planted. They went in on 17th March.

This spring was warm and dry. Very dry. The onions sprouted, grew and stopped. Then the monsoon started, and the onions began to grow again, turning into lush plants. Quite a lot of the Stuttgart Giant bulbs split into two or more, like big shallots, as did several Sturon and Centurion.

Split onion. The outer skin, instead of being dry and crisp, is soft and pappy

The autumn planted shallots (Jermor) split into lots of skinny shallots, and the garlic bulbs were small with lots of small cloves. The necks of the onions began to widen as the splitting progressed, forming a bowl which filled with water every time it rained. Some of these rotted from the neck down. They were easily detected by the dreadful smell (thiocyanates, for the chemists among you). This rot is called shanking. The leaves of Stuttgart and Sturon began to turn yellow and floppy. Both varieties were lifted on the same day.

The thick necks of the lush Centurion onions supported a good weight of leaves until the point where they began to fall over. To store onions properly, the necks need to be dry or you get black mould between the skins and the onion rots. The thicknecked onions can't dry out properly.

Thick-necked Centurion onion with squishy decaaying leaves inside the neck

The three conditions - thickneck, splitting and shank - are different sides of the same coin. An imbalance between nitrogen and potash in the soil is sometimes cited as the cause, but it really comes down to an irregular water supply putting the plant under stress. There's not a great deal you can do about it, except to water the onions when it's dry.The growth pattern of the onion layers is a giveaway: the outside layers filled out in spring, when it was dry, and these are so leathery as to be inedible. The inner layers date from the wet period, and are thick and juicy.

Onion with Thickneck

Onion with a normal neck

 Potash helps the skin of the onion to ripen - to go a nice warm golden brown and dry out - so we treated the Centurion with a watering of dilute wood ash solution three weeks before we lifted them. Half a kilo of Centurion sets turned into 16 kilos of onions, according to our fishing scales. The really big ones are still drying out. The Sturon and Stuttgart are on strings, waiting to be hung in the Old Kitchen, which is cool and dry. We blogged about stringing onions here. The skinny shallots became Shallot Confiture.

Shallot confiture, half way through  (photographed using elderly Nokia mobile phone)

We will have to monitor the condition of our stored onions very closely. That goes for the shallots and garlic too. And we'll look out for That Smell.

Stitched up

Yesterday I harvested our crop of "Jermor" shallots, which survived minus 20 Centigrade this winter apparently unharmed, in fact quite an improvement on last year. Shallots make wonderful sauces. For those who love onion gravy (British cuisine at its best) there just ain't no onion gravy like shallot gravy. Shallots are a relatively unusual vegetable in the UK and therefore expensive - hence an ideal vegetable to grow on allotments (as opposed to cabbage, cabbage, cabbage). I've grown Jermor for about ten years, first on the allotment in Leeds and then in the potager in France, plus a few in the flower border, where the spout of blue-green leaves is spectacular.

Jermor is a French demi-longue variety, which is to say a good bulb is flask-shaped, rather like an Orangina bottle in miniature. There are also cuisse de poulet (chicken thigh) and ronde (round) shallots, with golden or red skins. I am also growing Red Sun, a round red-skinned Dutch variety, planted in Spring and not a long way behind the Jermor. I've tried growing shallots from seed, but sets (baby shallots) are much more reliable. Wherever you buy them, France, England, Germany, Holland... Jermor sets are produced in France and Red Sun are Dutch in origin.

What a pleasure it is to see shallots, onions and garlic standing on lovely healthy roots. Our allotment soil, used by generations of gardeners since 1896, was contaminated by the spores of onion white rot. This fungus destroys the roots and base of the bulb, causing it to go brown, soft and slimy. Sometimes over 80% of the crop would be affected and unusable, and some of our fellow allotmenteers gave up growing onions because of it. The first signs of attack is drooping, flaccid leaves. When you pull up the bulb you can often see white fungal fluff around the base. The spores can live in the soil for at least 20 years, so we don't want it! The only thing we can do to prevent contamination is to buy authentic high-quality sets - never plant shallots or garlic from the supermarket shelf!

The harvest is now drying on recycled bread delivery trays in the hangar (out of the rain). Some - the smallest and the less attractive - will be turned immediately into shallot confiture, the recipe for which I blogged about here. The most unusual specimen is a pair of rather spindly bulbs from the edge of the bed stitched together by a stolon of couch grass (twitch grass) or I should be calling it chiendent.

Why we don't like Couch Grass

The silica tipped business end of Couch roots.

The dreaded Onion Fly

My poor "Jermor" shallots, planted in November and just about ready to lift, were infested with the grubs of onion fly. The first signs were a yellowing of the leaves, which is also a sign of the shallots being ready, but when I lifted a sample of the yellowest, the bulbs were rotting from the neck downwards. There were signs of little white grubs (mostly dead) and a few pupae.

Grub and pupa of onion fly

According to my gardening books, this little perisher emerges from pupae in the soil in May, but I suspect that it was earlier this year because of the warm weather. The organic treatment is netting to prevent the flies getting to the leaves, and of course growing alliums (onions, garlic, shallots, leeks) in a different place every year, cultivating the soil well so that the birds can get to the pupae.

I'm sure I have had such infestations back on the allotment, but never with the same effect. But then there was so much onion white rot that I often lost 50% or more of the harvest. Some plotholders didn't bother to grow alliums because of the losses. White rot is a fungus, and its spores can remain active in the soil for thirty years. No white rot here! It can only come in on infected sets - moral, don't plant supermarket shallots or garlic!

The grubs have not in themselves done much damage, and most of them are dead, but rot has taken hold where they have been working - just above the neck of the shallot - and unless I cook or freeze the bulbs immediately I will lose the lot. For that reason I'm making some more shallot confiture. I'd have made that anyway, but not with green shallots, so it'll be interesting to see if there's a difference.

The garlic and onions are also affected. I've lifted the garlic ("Germidour") and found tunnels and pupae, but not the rot, as yet. The garlic harvest is magnificent, with large, even-sized heads and decent-sized cloves.

The Germidour haul

The wounds caused by the grubs have scarred over, so I've hung the dried bulbs in bunches in a cool place away from the mice.

All those lovely shallots

At the moment, there seems to be a good supply of onions and shallots at the various marchés gourmands in the neighbourhood. Particularly fine and sleek are the shallots called either échalions or cuisses de poulet (chicken thighs). I'm going to make Shallot Confiture, adapted from Hilaire Walden's Sensational Preserves. It makes just over a kilo of preserve. It's a four-day job, but very simple. As with all pickles involving vinegar, you need a stainless steel pan to cook it, and a non-metallic bowl to start with.

You will need:
675g/1.5lb shallots
100g/3.5oz sea salt
1 litre/1.75 pints cider vinegar
450g/1lb sugar
1.5 teaspoons cloves
2 cardamom pods, crushed
1.5 teaspoons caraway seeds
1 long strip of lemon zest
1 cinammon stick
2-4 dried red chillies, crushed
a good pinch of ground chilli or cayenne

Day 1
Peel the shallots, leaving the root end intact. Put the shallots in a glass, plastic or ceramic bowl, sprinkle over the sea salt and add enough cold water to cover (they float!), stirring carefully to dissolve the salt. Put a plate on the shallots to submerge them, then leave for a day in a cool place.

Day 2
Drain and rinse the shallots thoroughly and dry on paper towels. Pour the vinegar into a pan and stir in the sugar. Place the spices, except the ground chilli, on a square of muslin and tie into a bag. Add to the pan with the ground chilli and heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Raise the heat and boil fairly hard for 10 minutes. Remove any surface scum with a slotted spoon. Add the shallots and simmer very gently for 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, cover and leave overnight.

Day 3
The next day, slowly bring the shallots to the boil, then simmer gently for another 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, cover and leave overnight.

Day 4
The next day, slowly bring the shallots to the boil once more then simmer gently until they are golden brown and translucent. Pack into warm, clean, dry jars, pour on the syrupy liquid to cover and shake to remove any air pockets. Cover with vinegar-proof lids and seal. Store in a cool, dark, dry place for at least 2 months before eating.