Month: May 2008

One of my gardening buddies in the community garden is a recent refugee from Afghanistan, and he brought what looks like an interesting leek with him. It doesn’t have a name, ‘Afghani Leek’ is my name. He’s given me some plants, and this is what I have growing in my garden now:

I know to some of you this won’t look like a leek, but don’t be fooled by first impressions! Even though it looks like chives or something similar, it’s not, it’s a leek.

You have to understand my method of communication with this gardener is Dutch, which is neither of our first languages. It’s sometimes hard to understand him.

What I understand is that I first have to let it grow in a clump, but use a pair of scissors from time to time and trim the top. After a while, most of the shoots will rot and die, and I’ll be left with one larger one. He says you can eat the trimmings, and they do taste like leek!

This is a picture of his garden where he has it growing:

The middle bed is full of clumps of these leek plants.

Here is a close-up of one of his more mature plants:

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this?

Hopefully I’ll have some seeds soon if anyone else wants to try growing it.

I’ve made several posts lately about perennial onions, which I really like. There is also a type of perennial leek called Babington’s Leek. While the plants right now have sent up a flower stalk or scape, so I assume it can be propagated that way, the plants also form roots that look very similar to a bulb of garlic and can be broken apart and replanted.

It’s not uncommon for me to receive the same plant from two different sources, for example because I make a mistake on a seed order or someone gives me a ‘free’ packet of seeds or plant as a gift. That’s what happened here in a way, about a week apart I first got some Babington’s Leek from Lieven, then Søren sent me some as a ‘free gift’ together with some other things he sent me.

The world of plant trading is very small here in Europe, so I assumed 2 or 3 generations back these must have originally come from the same person, but at the same time they looked different so I decided to plant them in separate spots and compare them.

I’m sorry, they are growing in and amongst my garlic and the straw background makes them hard to photograph clearly.

This is Søren’s Babington’s Leek:

and this is Lieven’s:

The main difference is Søren’s plants have a slight yellow color, and the leaves are more horizontally extended. Lieven’s is a darker green color and looks more like a small normal leek.

We had one of Lieven’s leeks for dinner tonight in a salad:

It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but the end is a little swollen probably because it is forming root divisions.

The taste was very nice, and much like a standard leek.

If propagation is only possible from root divisions, it’s going to take a long time before I have a reasonable number in my garden. I think Søren’s only forms two divisions, and Lieven’s four or five.

In a conversation about a year ago Lieven mentioned he sometimes comes across root divisions in standard leeks, so perhaps it’s not strange that Søren and Lieven would send me different varieties of Babington’s Leek, because perhaps it’s a common trait but modern varieties have just been selected for not dividing at the root. Maybe there are lots of varieties around. Is anyone else growing this? It might be interesting to trade.

Several people have been posting pictures of Jerusalem artichokes they’ve planted recently.  Here are mine, 8 plants.

For all the complaining I might do about the messes the previous gardener left behind for me (and there were a lot of them), this will surely be an issue for the next gardener.  Oh well, one gardener’s dinner is another gardeners weeds.