Allotments 4 All

I planted out some leek seeds in March 2005, had a very healthy crop from about last November on and was still using them in the kitchen right through until early April this year. I'd deliberately left a handful of each variety to grow on and to form seed heads for capturing some free seed to plant next spring.

So... there' my back story... now onto the slight discovery that I need some pointers on. I'd spotted at the root of one of the flower head stems a giant garlic-bulb looking affair poking through the soil. The plant is now 18 months old at this point and the seed heads are full of dense black seeds.. I was just pulling the stems to hang the heads to dry yesterday when I noticed them.

here's some pics...


The seed heads.


The bulblet at the base of the flower stem


For scale there's two of the bulbs that I'd pulled in my hand... I have hands like giant spades so they're quite a size.

So.. my question.. are they of any particular horticultural interest? I figure it's got to be worth planting a few just to see what happens!

I'd just finished planting out a little over a hundred new leeks for Winter/Spring 2005/2006 so I'm not going to be short of veg but I'm intrigued to see what'll grow up from this bulb.

My other thought is.. perhaps they have some culinary use? Failing all of this I shall feed them to the pigs!

- Adrian

Most Alliums produce offsets as well as seeds... I get it a lot on Garlic and Babbington Leeks.
1) yes they will be edible
2) they will grow into plants with identical characteristics of the mother plants like cuttings with no risk of variation as the seed have, being clones
;D

They look quite a size! It's likely you'll have something in flavour resembling elephant garlic which as you probably know is in fact a leek!

Apart from not having cloved, it does look rather like elephant garlic.

Keep us informed?

Quote from: OllieC on August 24, 2006, 09:47:35
They look quite a size! It's likely you'll have something in flavour resembling elephant garlic which as you probably know is in fact a leek!

I did not know that!

Quote from: Robert_Brenchley on August 24, 2006, 10:36:45
Apart from not having cloved, it does look rather like elephant garlic.

Ahh.. I should have mentiond on a couple of plants there were two or three 'cloves' very much like garlic and all wrapped in a thin/dry paper-like membrane.. I peeled this off so that you could clearly see the bulb in the photo. Oops.

Ok, I'm convinced... I shall grate one into a salsa this evening and report back.

It's probably going to be extremely mild; I use a whole elephant garlic bulb in a big pot of curry.