Shallot bulbs: plant now or wait?

I am cutting myself some slack. We are going to plant the last of 900 trees and shrubs today. It's been crazy the past few weeks.

This morning while I was waiting for my tree-planting helper, I decided to plant the potatoes. It's only a couple weeks late for our climate. When I opened the seed potato box that has been underfoot for 8 weeks, I discovered that I had also ordered shallot bulbs. Plum forgot about them, worrying about the trees. I forgot them so deeply I also started shallots from seeds. That's ok, I like shallots, can't have too many.

Back to the bulbs: I should have put them into the ground right away when I got them. Technically, I think these aren't even shallots, Yellow Moon Dutch Shallots, but multiplier onions treated like shallots. What would you do now? Plant now or wait until early fall? They seem hard and tight in their skins, they might hold. I don't expect a crop this year, but would they do ok through the high summer without getting their roots started earlier? Would that mess up their day length cycle and trigger them to flower before they get established?

I would plant them now. They will need water, but arent particularly drought prone.

I think they'll do great. Good luck!

Well, you forgot to plant, Ann...I only remembered that I did plant shallots early spring when I read your post...I poked them in the ground everywhere,so now I am looking and not finding a sign. I have a feeling, if they were up, I have been 'chopping and dropping' them along with a variety of green things growing between my main plants. I've never grown them before so don't even know what they look like...garlic leaves?

Put 'em in the ground. These really are perennials that can come back year after year if you don't dig them up and eat them. At least the ones in my strawberry bed are. They are in the flowering stage now, so if I let them drop their seed, perhaps I will have more in the cooler months.

As far as what they look like, typical onion type plant. Hard to tell apart from the other types of onions I have growing.

In they go, once the sun drops a little lower.

Judith Browning wrote:Well, you forgot to plant, Ann...I only remembered that I did plant shallots early spring when I read your post...I poked them in the ground everywhere,so now I am looking and not finding a sign. I have a feeling, if they were up, I have been 'chopping and dropping' them along with a variety of green things growing between my main plants. I've never grown them before so don't even know what they look like...garlic leaves?

I've done that too! To me shallots look more like sprawling green onions, only a little bluer, at least the ones I've grown before. Not as flat as garlic, not as big. But bigger than a chive, not as bunched.