Crying over onions

I gloated too soon about the onions. The red Spanish onions have onion white rot - or at least some do.
That's a real pain, as it can take 15 years for the soil to recover, and in the meantime you can't plant onions in the infected area again.
After much research, I was stricken with the dreaded Gardener's Panic and dug up a garlic bulb to see if it, too, was infected. But it was fine, except for the tiny detail that it had been dug up way too early. It was small if perfectly formed, and it does look like garlic, so I'm acting like it's my first-born. Which, in a way, it is.
My onions, of which I was so proud, have also got fat necks. Unlike rugby players, onions are not supposed to have fat necks, I now discover, and the list of things I might have done wrong to bring about this disaster is a litany of sins:
- Plant too late
- Not enough water at critical times
- Too much wind.

Of course, as they are red onions this isn't such a tragedy , as they aren't made for keeping. If they were brown onions destined for storage, it would be tricky as the fat necks apparently consign them to some unspecified doom.
As it is, the onions taste fine, fat necks or otherwise.

Live and learn.