Hi,
I grow the red shallots and found that when you plant then is very important. I now plant them in the Fall at the same time I plant my three types of garlic, and potato onions. Smitty

Short answer is that I think as long as they have good looking greenery, they should improve since they have a few months more of growing to go before they are ready.

Finally got back into the garden and dug around the shallots since I wanted to see about the "squshy" part before replying. I planted the same kind of shallot sets - Old German - at three different times: last fall, indoors in February and transplanted out in April and outdoors directly in late March. All of them have healthy greenery and are between 5 and 12 inches tall. The only ones that have anything squishy around the sides are the ones I planted in late March and I think that it the remnants of the bulb wrapper that normally decays and disappears as the shallot uses the energy stored in the bulb to put out roots and initial greenery.

They are all small, around the diameter of a pencil, but that's been normal for them at this time of year. They should start putting out much more greenery over the next couple of months and the bulbs should start sizing up around the end of June in our area.

I've never tried from seed - I wonder if you'll get good sized shallots this year or if you have to leave them for another year's worth of growth?