Leeks love the English climate, with a six month long winter harvest if you grow more than one variety.\u00a0 Throughout the tediously long winter they look impressive and keep on growing, so they are a definite must for lovers of greens in the winter.<\/p>\n
They are the easiest crop to germinate, simply sow the seed in a \u00bd-1\u201d drill at a spacing of 1\u201d x 6\u201d and gently water in.\u00a0 In a few weeks you will see lots of little leeks coming up.\u00a0 We sow all our leeks in mid April, if you sow earlier you risk them deciding to flower like onions do.\u00a0 They can be planted in a smallish nursery area and then transplanted (dibbed) to a full sized bed in July.<\/p>\n
Early varieties such as King Richard have slender, long and sweet white shanks.\u00a0 They can be harvested from September until Christmas when their delicate leaves tend to go mushy in hard frosts.\u00a0 Then we start eating mid season, Autumn Giant or Mammoth.\u00a0 By March we move onto the varieties with short and fat white shanks and beautiful bluey-green leaves, which can survive a really hard winter. Bandit or the heritage variety, Musselburgh, are best at this.<\/p>\n
Leeks like moisture, rich soil and sun, all of which affect the size they grow, as well as their spacing.\u00a0 5\u201d in 12\u201d rows should give you a good sized leek.<\/p>\n
Apart from Rust, which is a stress related fungal infection that slows growth and is mainly due to water stress or over-close spacing, the main problem is the leek moth.\u00a0 This is a new monster which has been imported from hotter climate\u2019s and it is successfully adapting itself to our climate.<\/p>\n
The moth flies in May and again in August.\u00a0 The organophosphate spray which keeps them off your leeks is not considered safe for gardeners to use, so the only remedy is to grow them under Enviromesh.\u00a0 Enviromesh is expensive, but lasts for many years and is like a mini-polytunnel.<\/p>\n
If I could, I would grow all my vegetables under it, as they all grow much bigger and better.\u00a0 You must put the mesh over the seeds as soon as sown, and not have any onion, garlic or leek leaf debris on the soil, which is what the moth pupates on over the winter.\u00a0 Sometimes, if you buy leek plants for transplanting in June\/July, they have been treated with organophosphate and will grow well through the main moth attack in August.<\/p>\n
In late June\/early July, dibbing is necessary to make a stronger and bigger plant.\u00a0 Dig the plants up, trim the leaves and roots and drop into a 4-5\u201d dib.\u00a0 Fill the dibbed hole with water and re-cover with mesh.\u00a0 As the moth flies by night, it should be alright to do this by day.<\/p>\n
And the man who grew a huge leek<\/em> Wishing a Happy New Growing Year to all our readers.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leeks love the English climate, with a six month long winter harvest if you grow more than one variety.\u00a0 Throughout the tediously long winter they look impressive and keep on growing, so they are a definite must for lovers of greens in the winter. They are the easiest crop to germinate, simply sow the seed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-2059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-gardening","tag-fergus-dowding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSuddenly found he had a nose like a beak<\/em>
\nAnd in the New Year<\/em>
\nWe began to hear<\/em>
\nHe would turn into a bird by the end of the week.<\/em><\/p>\n