THIS week I'd like to sing the praises of leeks. What a lovely vegetable it is. If you need a vegetable you can rely on, that doesn't seem to be as attractive to slugs and snails as its close relative the onion, which can lose all its juicy foliage to the slimy brigade and then come out of the ground no larger than it went in in its infancy, then I propose the leek.
It stands up to extremes of weather quite handsomely, and has resilience, the key to success in uncertain growing seasons.
The only thing that troubles it is the leek moth, which turns to ribbons any small transplanted leek that is unfortunate enough to have had a visit from the moth, which lays her eggs in the baby leek, and when the grubs emerge, they eat their way through the stem as they head for the great wide open. I think this problem is now much more common across the South West.
Other than that, leeks do have that magic quality of resilience that I mentioned at the beginning.
But some of them have another magic quality too. If you've ever left a leek to grow on and flower, perhaps, like me you'll have appreciated the magnificent presence it also has in a flower border.
I love the look of leek flowers, and I always leave a few to grow on and produce these incredible structural beauties.
But even better, some leeks will then produce hundreds of baby leeks within the flower itself. Since the plant has grown to a height of about three quarters of a metre, this looks quite striking.
One of the three leeks that I left to flower has done this, and I am not actually sure whether these three were all the same variety, and this is a female one, or whether the leek that has produced little leeklets is of a different variety.
Whatever the reason, it is a free gift in a year of very few gifts at all in the vegetable garden. What to do next? Well, it's a straightforward process of teasing out each leeklet from the flower, and planting them individually in a small module tray and leaving them to grow large enough to transplant into the soil in a few weeks' time.
I'm sure there will be lots of other magical garden produce to see this weekend at the Fishponds Horticultural Show.
This little 'village' show goes from strength to strength; the photography and art classes are always very interesting, and the show has a strong representation in the textiles classes too, quite apart from the flowers fruit and veg. It's this Saturday, the 18th, at the Methodist Church Hall, in Guinea Lane.
You can enter on the day, entries need to be there between 9am and 10.30am and the show opens at 2pm. Even if you're not interested in entering, it's a lovely place to drop into for tea and a slice of cake.
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