I suppose it’s the Welsh in me, but I love eating leeks and as luck would have it, I love growing them too – much like all of my favourite veg. It’s probably the anticipation of eating one of your favourites that motivates you to put in the extra effort in the garden. One of the best things about growing leeks is that they are quite low maintenance and hardy, grow through the winter and also are quite space saving during a summer establishment.

Sowing leeks can start in the spring or any time through the summer for a later crop – this year I sowed my leeks in mid-Summer with the intent of late growing, baby leeks through winter.

The perfect space saving technique involves sowing a ‘leek nursery’ whereby seeds are sown densely in a small concentrated area; say for example, in a quarter of the bed you will grow them in.

This frees up the rest of that bed to carry on cropping with some quick growing greens. I used the rest of my bed to grow spring onions, leaf radish and choi sum. Once summer cropping comes to an end, you can then dig up your leeks around mid-Autumn and transplant the biggest and best ones spacing them throughout the other three quarters of the bed to carry on slowly growing through the winter.

My tips for easy leeks:

  • When sowing, sprinkle the seeds (salt and pepper style) down the row.
  • Once enough of them are around pencil thickness they are ready to transplant. Dig them up and separate the smallest of the leeks – use them just like a spring onion in a stir fry.
  • Keeping the larger ones to plant on, trim about one third of the tops with scissors.
  • Using a dibble make your transplant hole as deep as you can approximately 20-25cm between plants and between rows. You can transplant a little closer if you want to grow baby leeks.
  • Drop the leek down the hole as deep as you can get it – the more stem you can bury underground, the more stem you will blanch (turn white).
  • No need to backfill, just give the leeks a heavy slow dribble of water which will wash the surrounding soil into the hole closing it up.
  • Sit back, and enjoy come harvest time!

Next week, I’ll be talking about apples, memories and banquet feasting!

Joel
Joel Williams is the Grower for the University of Roehampton Students’ Union’s Growhampton project