Plant Rescue 106 - Leeks

      A couple of days ago I was looking to get some dirt from the park compost pile to mix with mushroom soil to make a new planting container.  There used to be a sieve over by the compost piles, so I began a quest to find it by looking along the edge of the woods by the piles.  But I found something even better:

A beautiful clump of Leeks

More leeks a few feet away,  4/10/2012

      Yesterday I took my shovel to the park and dug up the leeks.  Dug too closely to the clumps and cut off the roots of three leeks, which allowed me to have one of them for lunch diced into my cottage cheese.  Makes cottage cheese pretty good stuff.

     The picture above shows the leeks after they were dug up.  The one on the right ended up being one of the kitchen leeks, as I severed nearly all of the roots.  That left eight leeks that I trimmed both the roots and the tops, as I have read that is the proper procedure for transplanting leeks.  You need to cut the roots to get the leeks back into the new hole, and you need to trim the tops to slow the needed uptake of water as the leeks regenerate their roots.

      I used these new leeks to add a top and bottom row to the single pre-existing row of leeks.  Using a mallet and a pointed post, I made holes about four to six inches deep.  You put the leek in the hole, but do not back fill dirt around the leek.  Just water well.  Rains will cause the dirt to fill in around the leek, while allowing room for the girth to increase as the leek gets bigger.  Planting them six inches deep will result in nice long blanched stems when they are harvested sometime next winter into spring.
      Yes, I did find the sieve while searching along the woods, but this leek plant rescue was more important than making new dirt.  Today is another day.