Miner menace

Val looks at a relatively new pest affecting her leek crop

- Val Bourne

LEEKS are an important winter crop for us. They are the hardiest vegetable of all, being the great survivors of cold winters – and we do get some freezing winters in Cold Aston. Leeks proved how hardy they were in the early 1980s, in my Northamptonshire garden, when temperatures frosted all the windows like something out of Doctor Zhivago. Unfortunately, there was no dashing Omar Sharif!

However, we have encountered a problem far more devastating than freezing temperatures. We have been hit by the allium leaf miner (Phytomyza gymnostoma), a pest we’ve never seen in the garden before. About a third of the leeks are affected, with yellowing foliage and the white, blanched stems streaked in pink. At first we thought the leeks had been hit by a fungal rot following an over-warm spring, a cool damp summer and a mild autumn. However, it soon became apparent that our leeks had some little additions in the form of small brown pupae lodged in the stems.