All about alliums

Two weeks ago we planted some onions. The below pic is so I have a reminder of the varieties:

Although not specified on the pack I think they are a mix of "Snowball", "Red Baron" and Japanese onions since these are the varieties that can also  be purchased individually from Wilkos. We have just finished eating all the Japanese onions from this years July harvest, some of which have gone soft and several had rotted. Perhaps not for long-term storage then. The Sturon onions harvested early August seem fine at the moment and the shallots "Topper" are also storing well.
Usually we don't grow garlic but since it is creeping more and more into our cooking I thought it would be fun to grow some. I chose a soft-neck variety called Germidour:

Reading about on the internet, soft-neck varieties are less prone to bolting in the spring than the hard-neck types (unless stressed) and also store better. The recommendation for clay/heavy soils is planting each clove 1 inch below the soil surface so that the tip of the clove is just below the soil (for sandy soils they can be planted deeper). I planted two rows between the leeks and spring cabbages and marked the beginning and end of each row with a cane. The row nearest the leeks has 10 cloves, the other row has 9:

In other allium news I have pulled the first of our leeks:

So far we have not succumbed to leek rust first spotted on 7th October last year. This years variety is Musselburgh, last year we grew Autumn Giant 3 -I'm not sure if that makes a difference? I have spaced the plants out further this year which probably helps.