[Martin]

My shallots are not looking good


and whatever it is has spread to the adjacent onions:


The shallots looked a bit yellow last week but now getting worse.

Hope it isn't onion downy mildew, which seems very serious.

What do you recommend I do?

The soil is not great; heavy clay which I have improved with large quantities of compost and sand. I've planted them fairly close, which was probably a mistake.

[Aidy]

I think this year we will be battling the moulds for sure, I would lift one of the onions/ shallots up that looks worst affected and check for signs of root fly as well, so far I have escaped this year but last year almost my entire crop was wiped out by it, if everything ok at the bulb end then it will be a mould/fungus of some nature.

[mushroom]

It looks mouldy to me, though i'm no expert. I agree with Aidy. All this rain AND a clay soil!

[WG.]

Dunno what it is but it certainly isn't good.

Does look a bit like downy mildew in Doc Hessayon book though.   If so, bulbs will be soft and won't store.

[Gwiz]

its a mildew because of the lousy weather.
i've had to lift all the onions and shallots on outr plot. they have dried out fine in the greenhouse, and we shall be-a-pickling shortly.

[Martin]

Thanks everyone for your comments.

I lifted the worst shallot plant and the bulbs were just fine.

So I've lifted that entire row (variety Golden Gourmet) and put it in the garage to dry. Would have preferred to dry them in the greenhouse but I'm concerned that any mildew might spread to the plants in there.

The bulbs were quite large enough to lift anyway. Its almost as if the foliage was starting to die back naturally because they were ready, and the weather then caused that foliage to start to rot...

My other shallots (variety Red Sun) also look quite large enough to lift but aren't so badly affected. We'll see how they fare over the next few days