Comanche Leeks
Allium Porrum

days to maturity: 105 days
plant spacing: 6-12 per square foot
sunlight requirements: 8-14 hours hours
look out for: hill your plant to get longer blanched area
harvest notes: can be harvested anytime, the longer you wait the larger it will be
seasons: fall, winter, spring
annual

 Leeks definitely can be grown in our climate (we wouldn’t sell them if that wasn’t the case!) but they, like many other onion family plants, prefer the cold, which means they are a smidge harder to get right down here. Planting your leeks properly is a great first step to success… you’ll want to make a deep hole with a pencil or pen (this is called dibbling if you’d like to research it) and drop the leek in bare rooted. only about 1 inch of the plant should be sticking out after planting. This is your first step to getting a nice long blanched center to your leek. Through its 100+ day growing season you’ll want to hill up soil around the growing leek 2-3 times, to continue the blanching process and make the white center stem even longer. Leeks can be harvested anytime so if you think you’ll want to harvest yours young you can plant them closer together and squeeze up to 12 in a square foot. If you’d like them to reach large mature size slowly thin to 6 plants and allow those to use the space to mature. Once you’ve taken the time and effort to grow yourself leeks don’t waste the green tops! Save them for use in broths and stews instead. While the technical days to maturity for leeks is around 100 we noticed we tend to leave ours in way longer than that because they are very slow growers. If you plant these in the fall don't expect to harvest them fully grown until spring. And definitely use this information to decide whether or not you have the space in your garden for a full season crop like leeks.