My plan is to to lay down tarps, dig out the alliums (hopefully getting most the roots) and move the alliums onto the tarp and then lightly cover each variety with some sifted soil to form a big clump. Unfortuantely this area is in full sun. I plan on watering a couple times a day or as it is needed.

Any other ideas to help the alliums cope with this two week move? Would a shade cloth help? Since this is only about a month before harvest of some of the early varieties of garlic and at most 3 months before the harvest of the later varieties, if I were to instead harvest the garlic now if the heads are of sufficient size and cure how would storage and seed garlic be affected?

The weather has been cooler this year than any I can remember and the rainfall has been perfect. The garlic so far is much larger than in any of the last 7 years I have grown it. This likely would of been my best harvest to date.

I also will need to transplant some asparagus, but I am not as worried about it as it is almost 10 years old and I just am hoping that it transplants well enough to provide for the next couple years while I start some new plants.

If you're able to dig deep enough that the roots are undisturbed, that may work; don't know if that's practical tho.

Allium roots are finicky. In my experience, if the surrounding soil is disturbed, or if light is introduced to it, the root dies almost immediately and the bulb grows another in its stead.

Can alliums that have not started to die back be pulled and successfully cured now or is the water content just too high at this point?

I started transplanting last evening from my ancillary beds. I made it through the shallots getting all the dirt I could. I know I lost a few plants as I did not dig deep enough to get all the roots. I will take extra care to protect the roots from sunlight. Details on specific varieties at end of post.

Since transplanting will set them back so much, I will cover them with a shade cloth and make sure to irrigate and give them extra attention to help them recover. With the multiplying onions and shallots I am not so concerned with getting a edible harvest as much as getting enough to replant for the fall for next year. I have sort of written this year off for eating from the garden until after all the work is done in the backyard. Alliums always seem to fade here in July. I know it is related to the day length, but in the years of drought the harvest always seems to come a few weeks earlier (last year a full month) and if it rains I seem to get an extra week or two so hopefully the extra protection will allow the transplants to recover somewhat.

I pulled a few of the smallest garlic plants and the cloves are of a usable size. I am thinking about culling the smallest plants which usually have the smallest heads and curing them. That would bring me down to about 140 heads of garlic to transplant and at least twelve of each variety. Even with a high transplant failure rate I should have enough to replant and the culls should provide garlic for the next year.

The Prince de Bretagne Shallots are doing so poorly (very little top or bottom growth) in my first year growing them that I am confident I got all the roots of about a dozen plants.

The Griselle Shallots had a larger root system and I had to make a decision for a few plants on which one to disturb the roots of. The bulb size is actually decent on the disturbed plants and if I could cure them so they would last to the fall planting the size would be similar to the size shallots that were planted.

The Frog's Leg Shallots (Red) were monsters when I planted them. A few of these are likely lost as the roots seem to run very deep. These seem to be dividing very nicely with each planted shallot being 6 or more small sized shallots. Several clumps had soft rot so hopefully the rest will survive. I will keep these in pots even afterwards as I do not want to introduce a rot disease into the new garden. These will continue to be isolated for another year.

Today I hope to tackle Winter Onions. Only the best clump as a few have started topsetting and I should be able to use those to get the bed reestablished.

Also I hope to transplant some potato onions into a stack of spare plastic nursery pots using the same procedure as the shallots.

And finally move the best two babbington leeks. These have done poorly for me so far, but better each year. I want to keep a couple around for another year or two to see if the pattern continues or at some point their performance levels off.

The backyard grading is now done and I have a new larger garden. I transplanted the asparagus back into the garden, but have not moved anything else back. All the alliums are surviving in their transplanted state. I have barely watered since the first few days and all are doing well. At this point I am busy building a shed and as the alliums seem to be doing pretty well, I am just planning on keeping them where they are for the next month until everything is ready to harvest. Scapes have been removed as they appear and some enlarging of the heads appears to be occuring.

Today I am going to plant some buckwheat in the vegetable garden to keep the weeds under control until I am able to have some time to properly mulch the new garden paths and start planting.