my new favourite plant?

Starting to develop their flowerheads are the shallots grown from last year's cloves. Though fighting for space with monstrous cabbages and silverbeet, they make lovely punctuation marks poking from the leaves. Love these extravagant pixie-hat curlicues and plump little cupolas. The stems themselves bend and curl - I can't resist sliding my hands along them as I pass - and the whole effect just makes me smile!


Better still, is the satisfaction of having grown these from my own plants, and the fact that the shallots themselves are such a fantastic veg to cook with - prohibitively expensive to buy but, as I'm discovering, so easy to grow.

Last year's two varieties - golden and oriental - have been resown willy nilly as I forgot to label or identify the different plants. While they didn't look much different last year, this year the two contrast quite starkly, one dainty and smaller, the other almost grossly large and overblown.

Observations - lessons learned - will continue as they come closer to harvesting. Some have only developed one stem, and I'm yet to see what sort of cloves that will mean and whether perhaps I've made a mistake (planting too deeply?). Others divided immediately into three or four stems, and at the base their swollen bulbs, a deep pink, can be seen.

Also one bulb I forgot to lift last year is reassuringly doing very well, so will be keen to see what I can harvest from it.

On a whim I tried transplanting a few into the open grove, and though they're tiny and have been 'pruned' once or twice by wildlife, they are at least still growing.