Planting a bed of leek plugs

Swapping veggies for chutney helps fill Ruth’s raised bed

- Ruth Hayes

SOCIAL media often gets a lot of stick (sometimes rightly so) but it can also be a force for good. The day after we had cleared space in a raised bed, one of my gardening friends on Twitter asked if we’d like his excess leek plug plants.

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, we exchanged them for a jar of homemade chutney and added the healthy homegrown plants to our bed.

Leeks like fertile soil in a sunny sheltered area, so before planting I enriched the soil with well-rotted compost and blood, fish and bone.

I planted the leeks using the ‘puddling in’ method, which involves creating a deep hole into which you drop a leek plantlet, then water it gently to puddle the soil around the stem.