That's shallot!

This year's constant rain has given me plenty of thinking time about the garden, but today's sunshine (at last!) tempted me out for a good, long walk with a little detour for seed buying along the way. I've been pondering my patio pots and what I could try for the first time as a bit of an experiment. My local shop provided the ideal solution: aha, why not try some shallots!?

I've grown these before on the allotment, though pesky onion white rot there meant I had to give up to give the soil a chance to heal. I've chosen shallots over onion sets this time as I think they give more bang for my buck, plus they feature in one of my favourite new lunch recipes, a creamy mushroom pasta. At 3 packets for a fiver I think they're worth a try. They're shallow rooted so ideal for pot growing albeit they'll need quite a bit of width to bulk up rather than depth. I'm eyeing up my Plantbox troughs as part of my experiment as well as more conventional pots. I haven't had much success with growing a lush wall feature with my Plantbox (unlike the adverts and the picture in my head, harrumph), so it'll be great to see if I can repurpose it into something more useful.

We've just passed the magic 10 hours of daylight here in the southwest today, so it's high time to get diddling in the garden, hurray!

Have you any garden experiments planned for this year - edible or floral?