Jackie French: Is there anything so fine as a sleek leek?

( by Terry Pratchett, who sadly gave us only the title, not the song that goes with it)

This is not the time to plant a leek, not unless you live in a climate where you can sit on the soil comfortably and not get up with chilblains or skin blue enough to scare a Celtic warrior. Officially, this means temperatures between 12 and 24 degrees – any hotter and they may grow and flower and seed – and grow too quickly.

In our climate this means we plant spring to late summer – leeks don't grow much in cold weather, and not at all when nights go down to minus 9, and will bolt to seed in spring. In frost-free areas, sow leeks in autumn to mid-winter.

This is, however the time to feed your leeks - there is nothing sorrier than a skinny leek. But don’t feed them too well – a light scatter of food every month is enough, just to keep them growing strongly, but not make them grow flabby and loose. In fact, to be really honest, the time to feed was about two months ago – the fatter the leeks are before winter commences, the better.

Nor is this the time to mulch leeks. Mulching now will stop the soil warming up during the day, and stop any growth that your leeks may manage. But as the garden warms in spring you want to keep the ground cool to stop the leeks from toughening and flowering.

Leeks tend to go to seed as soon as the temperature rises then dramatically drops again, and then gets warm once more – which pretty much describes any Aussie spring south of Brisbane. Mulching also helps keep the soil temperature even.

Mulching also keeps the stem – the bit you want to eat – from getting dirt in it, while keeping it tender too. Traditionally leeks were ‘hilled’ with soil or planted in trenches that were gradually filled with soil. This did produce deliciously tender leeks, but the dirt also sneakily tucked into every possible crevice, which even thorough washing never quite removed. One second you’d be tucking into a sweet leek baked in sour cream, the next you’d break a filling on a bit of leftover grit.

This means that the perfect mulch for a leek or, preferably, a hundred leeks, is lucerne hay, pea straw, home-made compost of the not gluggy or gritty kind, something loose and insulating that will also keep those fat stems tender as long as possible.

If leeks are young, well fed and watered, i.e. not drought leeks, you can eat most of the green leaves too. Try cutting them with a blunt knife. If they won’t cut through easily, feed the green leaves to the chooks and just eat the white part, peeling off as many of the tough outer layers as necessary. This can feel a bit like ‘pass the parcel’ and you’ll end up with about six layers of leek that are discarded but if they are well grown, removing the two outer layers is all you’ll need.

If you don’t have leeks to cosset now, make a note in the diary to plant leek seed in early spring, if you have at least three cool truly spring-like months for them to grow in, and/or in late summer or early autumn. A late summer sowing will mean your leeks will be ready to eat all through winter, deeply, gloriously delicious and (of course) far better than the much stored, much chilled, much travelled leeks that sit all green and white and boring in the supermarket.

It is almost impossible to grow too many leeks. Once you begin to eat them you keep going: leek and potato soup, tomato and leek soup, bean and leek soup, baked leeks in sour cream, baked leeks in oil and garlic with a touch of lemon or lime – good hot, cold or tepid; leeks in olive oil with currants and pine nuts tossed through pasta …

Home-grown leeks are a luxury these days, not peasant food. Not that there’s anything wrong with peasant food – and now I am going to pull out a few for dinner …

This is the week to:

Congratulate yourself on planting camellia bushes 25 years ago so they are now camellia trees. If you didn’t plant them 25 years ago, this is a good year to put some in. (Any year is a good year to plant camellias, as long as you have enough water for them for the first five years or so – after that they are delightfully droughtproof as well as winter floriferous.
Start raking (sigh) as the red and gold leaf carpet is beginning to turn brown and gluggy.
Pick tamarillos, kiwi fruit, limes, lemons, avocados, winter pears and Lady Williams apples if the birds have left any.
Cut back browned off summer blooming perennials like dahlias- there is nothing sadder in a garden than a bed of brown foliage.
Pick rosemary and bung a branch in the oven when you bake almost anything savoury or add to flower vases for extra fragrance.
Be extremely glad that it is winter and that growth has slowed or even stopped for a while; that harvests are not urgent; that weeds are no longer sprinting for the sky and you can take time off to dream about what you will plant in spring; or the trees and asparagus patch you might put in now; or the pergola, pond, small waterfall, glasshouse, aquaculture project or a few potted herbs on the kitchen windowsill …