Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: AlaninCarlisle on August 12, 2017, 18:45
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Don't know whether or not this characteristic is normal but it intrigues me. I have two leek beds, one in the back-garden where they are on good loamy soil that has been well manured over the 30 odd years we've lived here. The other bed is relatively new in a bed created from what was originally old pasture. The soil in this one is quite shallow, very clayey and has been well manured for about five years only. The leek variety is Musselburgh. Both beds were planted up at the same time from seedlings grown in a propagator
The leeks in the old bed are fairly uniform in diameter as far as their bottom 8 inches are concerned. The ones in the new bed have formed a distinct onion-like bulge at the bottom.
Anyone got any thoughts as to why this should be?
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I can't really help you but try digging one up, slice it and see if it's ok.
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I have seen that with some of the leeks I have grown in the past. I put it down to when they were dibbed in. I normally push the dibber well down into the soil and then drop the leek in so it sits at the bottom and then water in, I think the ones that developed a bulb had a void of soil around the very bottom of the dibber hole where the soil had washed down onto the bottom of the hole and this allowed the bulb to form... could be a lot of old tosh that theory though :D
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I can't really help you but try digging one up, slice it and see if it's ok.
Yes, I harvested a couple and they are fine. I get a similar phenomenon with parsnips in the two beds. The ones in the newer bed with the shallow clayey soil are quite squat, The ones in the older, more loamy soil are much slimmer
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Clayey soil is a good growing medium, so perhaps the 'goodness' is within reach of the leek roots much easier, so the leek doesn't have to work so hard to get enough grub to grow!
I've seen this happen on leeks here, and just put it down to richness of the soil - including some clay!
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Some of my Musselburgh leeks have bulbed out a bit this year too. They were dibbed and watered in the classic way. Taste fine, but more worryingly quite a few have gone to seed really quickly, maybe 15% so far. They have all done well grown this year in a fertile bed where carrots did well next to them, but under enviromesh for the first time to protect from the moth. I just wonder if it was all a bit too hot and sticky for them in there. It was a bit of a squeeze too with the carrots, so perhaps the leek leaves don't like being continually brushed/restricted by the mesh, and maybe they just didn't have enough room. Hmmmm. :unsure: