I never did post back last year... all the red onions and shallots got mixed together last year, so I had no idea what was what. Nothing divided n any way, so we just ate them all.
This year I planted no onion seeds, just shallot seeds. Seven germinated and were planted out. They grew normally, sent up no flower stalks, and surprisingly four of the six divided! I never expected this in the first yeR grown from seeds! The other three grew the expected single rounds. We're in a wet stretch of weather so I decided to pull them tonight. I got two sets of triplets and two sets of twins.
I also planted back seven of the shallot sets from last year. Five made it, and all five sent up a flower stalk again. Since I've already been through this with them for a few years already, I cut the stalks early and harvested decent sized bulbs. I'll probably plant a couple next year to refresh the seed supply since they seem to like growing flowers.
Next year I'm going to plant back the ones grown from seed and see what they do.