How to grow leeks?

There are various ways to grow leeks but this year I sprinkled some seeds into compost filled 5" pots and transplanted the resulting seedlings (in big clumps) into one of the raised beds when they were a reasonable size. I dug these up today. In the photo on the left you can see how the roots have formed a healthy looking root ball.




At this stage (or before) it's a good idea to mark out your lines (with string?) and make your holes. These should be six inches apart and six inches deep and the rows should be around a foot apart.




I then shook out some of the soil (photo left).












The individual leeks then have to be teased apart (above) and then the roots and leaves are trimmed (right).
The leeks are then dropped into the holes and 'puddled in' (left) which is a gardening term used by the real experts. It means filling the hole with water, which doesn't sound as technical as 'puddling in'. This process settles the roots and fills the bottom of the hole with soil so the leek can get into growing mode again.

They look neat in their rows which I've covered with netting in an attempt to stop foxes digging them up. They look for disturbed soil which, because they are stupid, they hope might contain a chicken.

I'd actually grown four clumps of leeks so I planted the remaining ones at Honeywell Nursery (below right) with the able assistance of Sam Watson.

Bloomin' June

[Above] Veg Club member Javonte takes a look at the potato plants

[Left] Curly Kale, an early kids Veg Club project, grown from seed. They grow into spectacular plants and are a staple of the Able & Cole veg boxes later in the year. Ha!

[Right] Dwarf beans. There's one clearly visible in the middle of the photo. Behind the beans are the canes for the climbing beans which are just beginning to curl around the poles.

[Left] The clumps of leeks in the foreground are waiting transplantation to rows in one of the other beds. The wild garlic is ready if anyone wants some?

[Right] Onions, shallots and garlic coming along nicely. You can also just see carrots in the outside rows planted by a kind Veg Club member - just where I was going to plant the leeks. Still they're coming on ok. I've also sown five rows of 'heirloom' carrots in the first raised bed... yellow, cream, white and red. Anything but orange. They never used to be orange you know.

[Left] Pak Choi. I'll be selling some at pick up on Monday. I've tried it. It's very nice.

[Right] Pumpkin plants. Last year the butternut squash was a disaster. These are Halloween style pumpkins.

[Left] Strawberries. Everybody likes strawberries. Not sure if there will be enough to sell as they don't ripen at the same time. Although there might be, as there are loads more than last year. I think they taste better than the ones in the shops. Javonte agrees.

[Below] I'm quite excited about my tomato plant cage. I borrowed the idea from something I saw at the Chelsea Flower Show a couple of years ago. Their's was much better.
Don't forget to prune your tomatoes if you bought any off me. And put them in the ground if you can. And support them well with big canes. And feed them when the first tomatoes are full size. They should be great!
And if you could donate to the African school project on the left it might actually get built, as they've almost reached their target.

Veg tribulations

I was beginning to think it was easy. Plant a few seeds, watch the seedlings grow into plants, cut them down, sell them. And then along came the brassicas. If you look further down this page you'll see photos of nice pointy headed cabbages. I didn't have time to harvest and sell them. The sun came out and they bolted. Which means the nice pointy cabbagy heads opened up and turned into great big leaves. Which is fine, but not so neat and pointy and ace as what we had before.

Post Script I whizzed down to Honeywell today and harvested twelve cabbages in their pre-bolting state. They were planted a couple of weeks after the Belleville ones and as the weather has been cooler recently they hadn't had a chance to bolt. Phew.


Please have a look at the 'Just Giving' box on the left hand side of the page. If you click 'donate' you will see more details about the project. It looks like a worthy cause to me, and Danny Wallce is an ok fella.
Speaking of the Club, there's an after-school workshop this Friday 15th May for joinees. 1530-1700.

The Belleville Cauliflower Experience

The brassicas have been pretty decent so far, especially now four of them have turned into cauliflowers. They look great and need regular watering to keep them in good shape.
These specimens are up for sale on eBay (in aid of the Belleville Primary School PTA) . Just go to eBay and search for the Belleville Cauliflower Experience. You'd be mad not to.

The other thing you can to with caulis apart from keeping them watered is to keep the sun off the heads which stops them yellowing (not that that affects the taste). The one in the photo on the left below has had the leaves bent over to protect it.

The leek seedlings are doing well (I think). I started them in five inch pots and after they grew repotted to ten inch, of which we now have three. One of these I planted out into a bed I'm using as a nursery bed, which at the moment only contains some wild garlic. The idea is to grow them on until they're as thick as a pencil and then they can be planted out in their final positions, alongside the garlic and onions. Unless we sow carrots there first, which we may do as the garlic and onions might repel the dreaded carrot fly.


The Pink Fir Apple spuds have been earthed up nicely by some veg club members. Last year I underwatered the potatoes which produced the unsightly, but harmless, potato scab. Nice name.
However, when it comes to watering (club members take note) , please don't overdo it!

Post Easter Break

Two weeks away and the change in the garden has been fairly amazing. The chard and spinach has gone crazy, the onions, garlic and shallots [foreground above] have come through as have the potatoes (pink fir apples), the brassicas have gone crazy and the fox has dug up the climbing beans.









[Above] Purple and white sprouting broccoli, a delicacy to be savoured!
[Below] Onions, garlic and shallots on the left and a rather neat looking pointy cabbage on the right. A bargain at a pound!













[Below left] spinach ready for harvesting
[Below right] swiss chard in the foreground. It's about to be removed to make room for more strwberries.














[Left] Pink fir apple potatoes, just showing through. We'll earth them up when they're about ten cms high.

[Right] Little gem on the right and a new crop of wild rocket on the left.

I might be doing more after drop-off harvesting on demand. Look out for the emails!

Spring Update

It's that time of year again, the clocks have gone forward, the temperature's rising, new shoots are appearing all over the place - and I'm off on my hols for two weeks.
Today was my last chance for a session before going away and, amazingly, I found this lump of ice on one of the polytunnels.
It was a bitter night, but I'm fairly sure that from today the nights and days will be getting a fair bit warmer.

The garden is all set for the growing season, and here's a rundown of what's in each bed:

Bed One:

Brassicas, including cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. They were being eaten by the pigeons, so we had to put nets up to keep them away.
The plastic bags are supposed to act as bird scarers.
Once these brassicas are harvested we'll turn this bed over to salad crops.


Bed Two:

Potatoes. Grown from chitted potatoes (old potatoes which are left in cool, light place to encourage growth of the little shoots).
I planted two rows of Pink Fir Apples which are a knobbly but very delicious potato. They are great in salads and can also be eaten hot. The Veg Growing Club members will learn about earthing up in order to increase the crop, once the shoots start appearing.



Bed Three:

This bed contains a fair amount of perpetual spinach which survived the winter. At each end is a pair of brassicas which were transplanted from bed five, which we emptied to make space for other plants to grow.




Bed Four:
This bed will be exclusively for strawberries, although at the moment there are still some swiss chard plants going strong.







Bed Five:
Two rows of garlic, one and a half rows of shallots, and half a row of onions. The garlic is grown from individual cloves, each of which will turn in to a bulb of garlic. The shallots are grown from 'sets' which look like baby onions. They split and you normally get eight or nine shallots from each set. I ran out of shallot sets so filled up the row with some onion sets from last year (Hopefully they weren't too old!).

The second picture shows an onion set in the ground ready to be covered over with soil.
In early May the Veg Club members will sow two rows of carrot seed. I've orded a mixture of heritage varieties including purple, white and red carrots, which is what they used to be like in them olden days.



Bed Six:
Brassicas, including cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. These are covered with nets to keep the pigeons off. The cloche is merely being used for the same purpose as I ran out of netting, but it will be interesting to see the effect on the grown of those plants under cover.


Bed Seven:
In the main part of bed sic there are two tunnels, one containing little gem lettuce, the other two rows of recently planted wild rocket.






Along the west side of the bed, in both the large and small sections, I've built a cane structure ready for climbing french beans. We can then grow some dwarf beans in front of the canes. These shouldn't take too much of the sun from the climbers.
We'll also be able to keep the wild rocket growing, but the little gem will have to make way for the beans.


Other random photos [click to enlarge]:

Purple sprouting broccoli, cabbage, wild rocket tunnel, little gem.

SEE YOU SOON. HOPE TO HAVE THE FIRST VEG GARDENING CLUB WORKSHOPS IN MAY!

Snow bound

Snow covering the beds on 3rd Feb