[brookegard]

i have not toched mine yet, they look happy so dont in tend to yet for a while, think they still have a bit of growing left yet, but will be keeping close eye

[Sue33]

am planning to lift mine this weekend, really pleased with them, red variety (sorry rubbish at names) good size 

[Trillium]

Oh, hadn't realised that.  Thanks Trillium 

Last year we had a wet summer for the first time in many years. The onions grew to very large size, but soon after they went into storage they started rotting and by Christmas all had rotted due to excess water absorption  Won't repeat that again as we had close to 200 onions in storage. The stink was unbelieveable! A few others on this forum also had the same problem. Normally, in our dry weather, we can keep onions for a long time.

Pulling and drying them is what they need to store well, but if you're getting lots of rain or heavy dews, then you risk this problem. If your weather is dryish, you can choose to let them grow on a bit, but you also risk them wanting to also try to put up seed shoots as they'll think they're in their 2nd year for seeding.

All the market gardeners around me have pulled theirs and I'm not one to pretend different. 

[gavinjconway]

My roof-top onion tubs are still growing and green. A few have bent over but I normally leave them till the rain really sets in. We eat onions almost every other day so they diminish. I will pull all in a few weeks and dry them in my greenhouse.. I bend the greens downwards and  slot them through the table slats. They dry really well like this.. Here in my greenhouse 2 years ago...   

[JayG]

Now there's an organised and tidy gardener!

With my shallots all safely harvested and drying I might as well leave my onions-from-seeds to carry on growing just to see what happens (I don't think storage quality is going to be an issue as there are only 10 of them and one or two of those are more like spring onions on steroids!) 

(By the way, my shallots were a month late compared with previous years despite being planted at about the same time of year.)

[gavinjconway]

I've never had any joy with shalotts... but I think its cause I've always planted them late!! Are they good eating?

[Yorkie]

I only grew shallots once.  They were easy enough to grow but a nightmare to peel as they were quite a small variety.

[gavinjconway]

I'll give them another go this year and plant on the shortest day as supposed to...

[JayG]

I've grown most of the "usual suspects" over the last 5-10 years and always plant them in late Feb. They struggled a bit this year with the peculiar spring and summer weather but came good in the end.

Golden Globe and Mikor have always been pretty reliable, GG being (not surprisingly) rounder and usually a bit larger than Mikor, although I actually find the more slender types like Mikor easier to peel.

Although I've grown onions from seed this year I usually only grow shallots (can't resist the return of up to 8 shallots per single bulb planted!)