The other day I had the grand plan of recreating a dish I had in Paris. It was an unmitigated disaster. The key ingredient was the artichoke. I had never prepared one before and I may never again. The dish was a lovely tender bottom half of an artichoke with amazing smoked salmon, a poached egg, and a mustard sauce. The last three I was able to do. However we now have a pot that is blackened and I’ll have to attack that with oven cleaner. I hope that works. I was steaming the artichoke and it ran out of water. Sigh.
So I moved on to other things. I decided it was time to get the leeks and onions into the ground. We like to rotate our little crops each year and that was the plan for the leeks and onions. Mother Nature had other plans as one bunching onion plant is regrowing and some seeds that didn’t sprout last year are coming up now. Which is pretty cool but that bed is staying the same as last year.
For the leeks I dig out two small trenches to plant them in and mix in organic compost and fertilizer. A lot of gardeners will bury the leek as it grows to blanch it. I only do that a little bit until the leeks are pretty sturdy as I like the dark green. More flavour.
I plant them carefully and they are so delicate at this point. Hard to believe they can get up to 5 feet long and you can use them as bats. 🙂
The bunching onions are much easier. After mixing in the compost I just plug them in willy nilly. I left space to plant more seeds in a few weeks to stagger the harvest.
Our garden is well on it’s way now with the bulbs and flowers starting to grow. The peas are poking through and I think spring is finally here to stay!