We are lucky enough to have quite a big garden and we try to grow other veg as well when we have the time, although young kids do tend to restrict the amount we have quite considerably. My darling wife Helen manages to fit more into a day than I and should take most of the credit for our food production. Anyway, we’ve been merrily chomping away on new potatoes (Pentland Javelin) for over a month now and you really can’t eat better when they’re so fresh. We’ve also been eating Broad Beans too which are really tasty and have been a really good cropper along with various salad leaves etc.

Today though was time for the Allium harvest.

Back in February/March planted my favourite shallot, called Longor which is an elongated French style shallot with great flavour and excellent keeping properties (I mean like a year or more!). And we also grew a smaller quantity of the more typical round shallot found in the UK and some Garlic as well. These were all ready to harvest today.

Here’s the results (click the pics for close-ups):

The Allium Harvest

I’m very pleased the quantity of shallots and Garlic this year. All this lot came out of just one of our eight raised beds which are each about 10′ (~3m) long by 4′ (~1.3m) wide.

The Longor Shallot

The Longor is this lovely elongated shallot used extensively in France and elsewhere in Europe but not often seen in supermarkets here. We bought the original sets from the Organic Gardening Catalogue and from each bulb, you normally get between 5 and 8 shallots when they’ve finished growing.

Garlic Bulbs

We eat quite a bit of Garlic so the 30 odd bulbs here won’t last us very long but it’s always nice to have grown your own.

All of these plants will be left outside (hopefully) now for a few days to dry off in the sun, or alternatively we’ll put them in the greenhouse if it rains. Once dried they’ll keep for a good while. The Longor Shallot we’ve grown before and it really did keep very well – we were still using them a year after harvest.

Of Alliums in general we have found that they don’t take up much space, are very easy to grow and need little maintenance during their growing cycle. I’d highly recommend them for easy and tasty home-grown produce.