Leeks

Now is the time to start thinking about your leeks. Dirty Nails likes to get his autumn leeks on the go as early as possible. To this end he will be sowing seeds of an autumn variety in trays this week. Carentan 2 is an ideal variety.

Sow the small black seeds thinly in a tray of potting compost and cover lightly. These will do well if kept moist, and set on a windowsill indoors until the grass-like shoots appear. It won’t take too many days.

It is always a thrill when the first leeks start sprouting. The trays can go into the greenhouse at this stage, and then be planted out into a nursery bed from about the end of March.

Dirty Nails always overdoes it with his leeks. But this is good, because half the crop can be dug up and eaten for a sweet tasting baby leek treat around the middle of July.

Natural History In The Garden: Badgers In February

Badgers that live close by will be giving birth at this time of year. Two or three cubs per female are usual. They spend the first eight weeks or so in their underground breeding chamber, which will be lined with soft, dried vegetation that the badgers collect from around and about. When they are cleaning out these chambers, or bringing in fresh bedding, debris is often left scattered in the vicinity of their hole, or sett. Such evidence of badgers is particularly noticeable this month.

Vegetable Snippets: A Brief History Of The Leek

The leek, Allium porrum, occurs naturally across a region that stretches all the way from Israel to India, and has been cultivated as an important food source since at least 3500 BC. Its distribution throughout Europe was assured by the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. The latter, who brought leeks to Britain after AD 43, knew leeks as porrum. After their Empire collapsed in AD 410 this crop, along with cabbages (brassicas) and beans (pulses), became an important dietary ingredient throughout the British and European Dark Ages. In Saxon times leeks were widely grown, and the Anglo-Saxon term laec tun, which actually means leek enclosure, can be found today in both family and place names, including Layton, Leighton, Latham, Lighton and Letton.

Leeks were exported to the so-called New World. By 1775 both settlers and Native Americans were raising leeks for the pot in what was to become the United States. Back in the UK this member of the onion tribe remained popular through the Little Ice Age that took place between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, when it was happily able to withstand the drop in temperatures as a ‘standing crop’ (left in the fields and dug as required in winter).

Often overlooked in more recent times, leeks offer a gourmet meal when cooked gently until tender. The French, notorious as connoisseurs of fine foods, are apt to compare a well prepared dish of leeks with that much sought-after delicacy, asparagus.