Saturday 19 June 2010

Planting Leeks

The garden is flourishing, giving us salad and spinach crops until we cannot eat any more, and peas and broad beans are surely not too far away.

Today I had some leek seedlings to plant out. They didn't look like leeks, more like chives, and I had around 40 of them stuffed into a medium sized flowerpot. They needed attention.

I knew that leek seedlings had to be treated differently - something about watering in a hole - but I wasn't sure how. Looking it up, the BBC website says you have to make a hole 20 cm deep with a dibber, put the seedling in and then water it in. I tried this. I don't have a dibber, so I used the back of my trowel. Making a hole in the ground was a little tricky when you're pushing onto the blade of a trowel. So most of the holes were more like 10 cm deep. Then I watered them in. They floated! Soil was not pulled down into the hole, as the website promised! I gave them a little more help - replanting them and then pushing some soil into the hole - and I'm hoping they will be forgiving. I love leeks, and love the thought of pulling them straight from our garden. I'll keep you posted.

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