You recall that I plant my leeks by first ploughing a trench, then I take a tulip bulb planter and make the hole even deeper to plant the leek plantlet into. I pour some water into the hole then drop the leek into it, and then a tiny bit of soil so that the plantlet will stand straight up. Over the ensuing days and weeks the hole becomes filled and the leek plant begins to grow taller. As more time passes, the trench is filled-in and mounded up, so that where the ploughed soil excess was now becomes a deep furrow and all the plants are then growing out of a mounded-up row. Now then; at a certain moment, when the leek foliage is at the correct height, I slip paper towel tubes over the plants to create a longer length of white-blanched stem. The reason for this is no doubt obvious to a leek eater— it is the white bit that one eats. My goal was then, to create more processable leeks to freeze-in. Here are some pics to illustrate the result. The upper leek is a normal planting, without a tube. The lower leek had a tube. You can easily see that the white section is clearly longer. Here are a few mixed together: I am well chuffed with this result. Here they are, cleaned and trugged-up and ready to go home: The tits are dining on top of the feeding table. They are eating drone larvae removed from my hives. We enjoy our little feathered friends so much during the frequent pauses.
What a fascinating and helpful thread @Sjoerd , thank you for that - those leeks are prize winners, and I hope you will enter them in an appropriate show
They look great @Sjoerd not knowing anything about bee keeping, why do you take the drone larvae out of the bee hive?
Thanks so much, Tetters. Ach, it is a pity, but we do not have shows and contests like you folks have over there. That would be great fun. I once considered taking a course to become a judge over there, but after checking out the contest scene over here, I discovered that I would have no place and no one’s fruit and veg to judge. I let it go. Loggie, it has to do with combating varroa mite’s. Varroa mites are terribly destructive to honeybees. So, the way it goes is that varroa mites prefer drone cells to go their development stages because drone cells remain closed longer than worker or queen cells during the pupae stage. They are safe in the closed cell and thus free to develop in pease. Knowing this, beekeepers place one honey frame over to one side of the brood chamber. A honey frame is about 1/2 the size of a regular brood frame, so what the bees do is make large drone comb on the underside of the honey frame. The queen lays eggs in the new cells, the mites creep in and after a few days, the worksters seal the cell. What the beekeeper then does is cut this new comb off the frame, thus removing the drones with the mites inside their closed cells. I place this out for the tits and they ever so gently remove the drones with the mites attached and gobble them down or feed their young with them. Those drones are an almost worthless bee because all they do is eat and mate…and the large majority never even bother mating with a new queen. It is a small wonder that queens ever become fertilised. What a life those drones have just idly hanging about, consuming the honey. They sometimes fly to other hives and can walk into a strange hive right past the bouncers for the bouncers know they pose no physical danger as they have no stingers. Is that clear? If not, let me know and I will try again.
Heyyy, what about that! That sounds like you will just have time to get get your winter leeks in. Mate, I am excite for you. Not everyone likes leeks, but I do…very much. Are leeks something that you folks eat often? I have no idea what the palate is there.
Yes and it seems onions are a winter crop here so I thought to give it a go and see what pops out in April.
We have grown winter leeks before. They are handy to have in garden over the winter. We now want to have everything processed and in place for the coming year at the end of the season. Some things we leave over the winter are Swiss chard and sprouts. That gets in the way of our winter mulching though. That sounds delicious, Loggie.
Thank you Sjoerd, yes over here can over winter sprouts, i grew some in containers and got some to go with our Christmas dinner. The next few years had those cabbage white catapillers eating them so i didn't do them again.
Thank you and yes they are. Thank you, no it's Barley when he was a puppy, he was always getting under the blanket, he's such a character and very intelligent.
