LEEKS have arrived!

Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply is now shipping leeks, garlic, onions and shallots! 

Leeks are a wonderful winter crop. Here on the north coast of California they will grow now until mid spring. They add a lot of character to the otherwise dull landscape of the rainy winter season.

Swiss chard and kale are two additional crops that add delightful color contrast to the beds. Chard now comes in a rainbow of colors and textures as does the kale. These crops also mingle very well together in the kitchen. Whether you are making soup, a veggie tart or swiss chard rolls (think cabbage rolls but better) it is always a pleasure to dine on fresh winter produce picked just moments before consuming.

The leeks arrived with very detailed growing instructions. The first thing I did was remove them from the box and place them in a bucket with about an inch of fish emulsion solution, mixed at one tablespoon fish emulsion to one gallon of water. That would hold them over until the next day for planting.

Leeks are heavy feeders, meaning they consume large amounts of nutrients. In anticipation of this fact I had already added a yard of compost to my raised bed. I also added some bone meal for phosphorous and gypsum (calcium/sulphur) because we tend to have acidic soil. That project completed it was time to plant!

Well almost, first I had to trim off all the roots and tops down to the innermost leaf that I could see. Once that was completed I had a nice sized bucket of starts.

Now on to the planting, I dug six inch trenches, placed the starts about two to three inches apart in the rows and six to eight inches between each row. This is a bit closer than is recommended but I will be harvesting every other one in the row as soon as they reach one half to three quarters inch.  I have a recipe for steamed young leeks with a mustard sauce that is a family favorite. I filled in the trenches and watered heavily. As you can see in the photo they look great. As a side note, I ordered ten pounds of starts and that planted a one hundred square foot bed perfectly, noting the close spacing. (Five - twenty foot rows)

If you would like a visual to this story Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden has an online video on how to plant leeks that is really good. I even learned a trick, albeit too late for this season (I need to check my emails more frequently, if you subscribe to the weekly videos they will show up in your email box, how simple is that). If you pay attention to how the leaves are growing you can place them in the trenches so the leaves grow into the space between rows, and not into each other. That will make for a much prettier and less crowded growing space. Yes, I contemplated going out and giving my starts that were not positioned correctly a twist, but decided there were too many other projects yet to do, the leeks would be fine.

PESTS: Leeks, chard and kale are not bothered by much here, especially in the winter season. There is one exception to this rule however. GOPHERS: gophers love, love, love leeks, onions, garlic and such. Did I say loved?

For you folks following my progress, let me insert a brief update on our gopher situation. I will follow this post with another one giving a review of the traps we use and their effectiveness.

Okay, back to the gophers. They will eat a lion’s share of leeks if given the chance. We usually don’t mind sharing but this last season it got completely out of control with entire cabbage heads disappearing into the ground. So my Husband began trapping them. To date we have gotten ten gophers and one mole! With a few yet to catch. They are very determined critters. 

When my daughter built this raised bed she intended to make it gopher proof. She placed two layers of small chicken wire at the base of the bed, stapled it three quarters of the way up the sides, and still the gophers got in! So if you have gophers and you are going to build raised beds, you might want to check out the gopher wire offered by Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply. It was also mentioned in the leek video. It has smaller holes and is galvanized to protect against deterioration.

Well I am off now to finish building a chicken tractor (portable pen) that I intend to use to keep my beds weeded during the rainy season ahead.