It’s Time to Plant Leeks and Onions
Even on the coldest days of the year, I love being able to get out into the garden and grab some simple vegetables and herbs. This is how I plan what to grow in winter: carrots, celery, onions and leeks. Everyone should grow onions, but don’t sleep on leeks. It’s a milder alternative to onions and garlic, but with more substance.
Onions and leeks are the basis of every recipe.
Every soup and stew starts with onions such as garlic, onions and leeks, so it makes sense to have them in the garden. You want to grow and eat leeks if you’ve never done so. Instead of anything made with onions, you can use leeks. The flavor is complex but milder than onions and creates a silkier finish. My fall is full of potato leeks and cauliflower leek soup. Braised leeks with breadcrumbs are an unexpected but memorable side dish.
Growing your own onions gives you the opportunity to grow varieties you won’t see in the grocery store. While it makes sense to grow guardian onions that you can cure and store (that’s what they sell you in stores), you can also grow Egyptian walking onions, which are very interesting and grow tiny bulbs on the tops of the greens that tip over. and replant yourself. There are also cippollini onions, beautiful purple onions and very sweet yellow and red onions that you won’t find in the supermarket. Growing your own gives you the opportunity to experiment.
Bows love winter
Onions and leeks are great for wintering. Leeks take between 75 and 115 days to mature, but this depends on sunlight. The leeks you plant now will be ready to harvest in the spring, giving you plenty of time to get the white, blanched part of the final vegetable. Onions also require a long investment of three to four months, so you will also be harvesting them in the spring.
Grow leeks and onions from seeds, sprouts or sets in the fall.
Onions can be grown in several ways: you can plant seeds or, if you prefer, sow onions in your garden. Most nurseries sell onion shoots, which are sold in bunches of 25 bulbs, about five inches tall. This time of year you can also buy onion sets – tiny young bulbs that you plant just like flower bulbs. This bow now needs to hit the ground. If you are planting sets or seeds, you can dig a long trough in the bed, place onions with their roots in the trough or onion sets in the trough, and then cover the trough again. The sets will be buried. If you used onions, the greens will still be exposed, but the roots will be buried.
Leeks, like most onions, are fairly easy to germinate from seed, so can be sown directly if desired. Even when very young, they can withstand heavy loads when separating seedlings. When you plant leeks, you need to plant them as deep as possible: all but an inch of the leek should be under the soil. If your leek seedlings are five inches long, the leek hole should be four inches deep. When leeks are so small, the best way to make those long holes is with a pencil, which you’ll use like a shrew (a gardening tool that makes holes for seeds or plants). You can plant leeks six inches or so apart in well-cultivated, compost-rich soil.
Transplanting predominantly white leeks.
Onions don’t need any intervention, but leeks benefit from it: Since the white part of leeks is the part you’re most likely to use, here’s how to get mostly white leeks. Onions and leeks will grow over the winter even under snow, although not to their full height. In late winter or early spring, dig up all the leeks, which should be quite long. Reduce them to 10 inches. Now you will need a nine-inch digging machine, which you will use to make nine-inch deep holes and replant the leeks. Simply cut a piece of PVC pipe to create one, or use the handle of a shovel or rake, or even the handle of a household broom. Push the excavator into the soil, then pull it out and drop in the leek seedling. Although you only need to do this once, you can repeat the steps of digging up your leeks, pruning them and replanting them several times throughout early spring. , and your leeks will become longer as a result. The more leeks are underground, the longer the white part of the leek will be.
Onion harvest
Another attractive aspect of onions and leeks is that they can be harvested at any time. Of course, they may not be full-size, but even young onions taste the same as full-size ones, unlike, say, tomatoes or carrots. This is an effective way to thin out onions for the winter.
However, it is best to leave onions until spring, when the tops of the onions have fallen over and the neck of the onion, that is, the part between the onion and the top, has dried and hardened. This is a sign that the onions are ready for harvesting; The best way to do this without harming the onions is to loosen the soil underneath them with a pitchfork. After digging, you’ll need to cure the onions by dusting them off (not rinsing them) and then laying them in a single layer or hanging them to dry in a warm, dry place with good ventilation. Treatment takes up to four weeks. You can tell the onion is ready when the outer layers of the onion become papery and dry.
When you’re ready to pull out the leeks (which I usually do as needed), be sure to use a shovel and dig out all the leeks, which will be quite deep. I use a garden hose to spray the dirt off the root ball before bringing the leeks inside.
Due to the way they grow, leeks usually contain a lot of dirt. Cut them in half to clean them effectively under running water. Then use the white part like garlic or onion, but the green part is still good anyway if you use scallion greens. I chop them into salads, make pesto, or roast them.