Mr. Green Jons

I wish I had taken a picture of my over-wintered leeks before I yanked them up because they were nearly 4 feet long!  Okay, I might exaggerate a little, but they were at least 3 feet high because they came up past my waist!  In either case, they were big!  I made this entry under the title of “reduce, reuse, recycle” because leeks are one of the easiest vegetables to obtain stock for and to grow.

Most of my leeks come from vegetables I bought at Freddies with the rest of my groceries and were not purchased with the intent to plant them.  However, one evening I was reading, “Carrots Love Tomatoes” by Louise Riotte and she mentions that she didn’t buy leek seed or starts, she just cut the roots off of the bottom of a leek she got at the store with the intent to eat it!  She planted the roots and up came her leeks.

So, last fall, I did the same thing: sliced the root and about 1/2 inch of the white of the leek and planted it.  Lo and behold, in about a week’s time, a new leek was pushing up through the center of the old dead one.  Since curiosity usually gets the better of me on such things, I pulled it up to see if the roots were growing.  I had thought that the leek wasn’t growing, but was merely drying out, thus pushing the center up like a dried out onion and they were!  I was much pleased!  Soon enough, I had leeks growing in my garden.  I knew that leeks were a vegetable that can overwinter because back on the farm, we had leeks that grew throughout the cold midwestern winters.  I figured, if they can survive an Illinois winter, they can grow in Portland!  Thus, my leeks got to be about three feet tall.

My partner mentioned to me that green onions are very similar to leeks in structure and maybe I could do the same with them, so I tried that too, and it worked for green onions!  I won’t say that I’ve stopped buying leeks and green onions, but I buy fewer of them now than I did before.  My green onions have more zip than store bought ones and my leeks are so much more healthy looking than what you’d get from under the produce misters.

Some notes about trying this:

• You can only do this process of saving and planting roots up until the time when the ground starts to cool and the weather turns crappy for the year.  Leeks and green onions can survive a winter, but they can’t take root during these times.  I stopped planting in late September/early October, because after that, the weather is simply too cold for the leeks to start growing.  They need to establish a root system before the winter so that they have food during the cold months.  If they are planted too late, they have nothing to eat and you’ll end up with a rotten mushy circle in the ground, not a leek.
• Cut the above the roots of the leeks about a 1/2 inch and then set it in a dish of shallow water for a few days.  This will jump-start the root growing process.  You can then put it in the ground.
• When you put it in the ground, cover it with about 1/4 inch of soil and then water heavily.  The leek will pop up from the “coin” of root stock that you planted.  It will be very ugly (the tips will appear cut and shriveled) until it gets really established and then you’ll be amazed at how elegant these plants are.
• Like other onions, don’t let these go to flower and seed.  If you see a flower bud pop up, cut it off.  The leek flower buds are edible, so toss ‘em in a stir fry!
• When the leeks are established and about 4 inches high, hill dirt around the base and you’ll have a white part.  If you don’t, most of your leek will be green.  Nothing wrong with the green parts, but the white parts aren’t quite so tough on the dentin.

Here are some pics of my leeks in various stages of development.

"coins"

Sprouts

Ugly teenaged leeks

Here is a picture of a leek flower bud

Post script: I found a picture of them just before I tugged them out of the ground:

Mature, graceful, adult leeks