What is your secret for those leeks may I ask?
Its no secret as such but I think variety and timing is the most important aspect of growing them, I think you can sow and plant them out too early at least thats what I find up here on the top of the Pennines.
Over the last couple of years I have been looking for a variety to replace my tried and trusted variety "Musselburgh"
Last season (2012) I bought some seedlings from the NVS stall at Harrogate Spring Show (Late April 2012) and these were a variety named " Oarsman"
The thing I noticed most about them was the way they were grown which was different from how I grew Leeks and that was they had been sown into 5" pots.
Now that may have been down to they wanted batches to sell to the public at the show.
When I got them home I considered planting them out then but changed my mind and pricked them out into individual 3" pots and placed them in the cold frame, until the 6th June when I planted them out!
The results were good so I bought some seeds to grow entirely by myself!
I also bought three other varieties for comparison and these were Musselburgh,Electra and Elefant.
I sowed all four varieties on the 2nd March and allowed them to grow until the 6th May and left them to grow on until I planted them out on the 27th May.
My feeling is that it is better to grow them on individually for a while rather than dibble them at pencil thickness into the sopil as most people do!
This is how they looked on the 25th September;( Oarsman is in the foreground) then Elefant, Musselburgh & Electra.
At harvest time I found that Oarsman was the earliest in maturity and I am not sure if they would survive the winter months like Musselburgh do so I harvested them.
I would have liked to have left a few throughout the winter to find out how the would stand up but couldn't as they were growing in the plot I was vacating.
Electra (the type shown in my blog) was the next best (in my opinion) and I still have a half dozen or so still in the ground which I will remove this weekend.
Elefant looked like over grown spring onions as they were 'bulbous' at their base as opposed to cylindrical as most leeks are.
So I guess I fell in to the trap that the word "Elfant" sounded as if they were going to grow very large when in fact they only comparison to an Elephant was the "club foot"
But I will be growing them again in 2014.
Musselburgh was just Musselburgh very hardy even in the worst of weathers so I will still grow a few as back up and for Feb / March cropping.
And that is all there was to it¬
Tg
