I plant mine in a trench about 6 inches deep, leaving the dirt that I pull out alongside the trench . Then I just pull that soil over the leeks as they grow. I mound a little after the trench is filled, but not much. It's hard for me to keep a mound built up - I guess because of all the rain we get especially in the spring.

I was recently re-reading about leek planting and what I read was to get a dibble (aka "pointy stick") and make a hole so that you can put each transplant deep enough that the soil is just below the first set of leaves on the stem. Then water them in. Once they get to be about the thickness of a pencil, the French are known to dig them out, then re-set them in deeper holes, once again up to the first leaves. This keeps dirt from getting in between the layers as can happen when you hill the dirt around them. Or you can do as my Mom does, which is just not worry about blanching the stem so much, since the leeks you grow yourself tend to be tender enough that much of the green part can be eaten easily. Anyhow, as you can see there are various methods that work.

Thanks for the info Barbe and sunnibel, but how deep do I initially plant them? They're about 6-8 inches long right now.

Sunninel: I probably won't be doing that french thing, but I'll probably "hill" them a couple inches as the season progresses.

Kevin

This post was edited by woohooman on Tue, Jan 22, 13 at 21:05

You can also hill or blanch them with mulch or pulled weeds and then grow them in plastic mulch. I have done that for years.

Little video for you woohooman. At 2.00 there is the method of dibbling them in.

Here is a link that might be useful: Planting leeks

I also planted in a trench which worked great by just filling in because they start out so small. I transplanted mine so only about half of the plant was above ground but mine were only a three inch shoot. by the way if you don't eat some leave them in the garden to overwinter and they will send up a seed head flower that is a softball size round flower head that is very pretty.

Thanks flora for the video -- that dibble is pretty cool. I just don't know if I want to go through all the trouble of planting twice. I've done pretty good with them the last couple years by just planting seed in my oak barrels and then just filling in with about 3" of soil as the season progressed. They aren't really large, but there's plenty and the effort is very minimal.

This year I grew sprouts, though. I just ended up digging a 6" trench, filling in behind with soil, and leaving an inch or 2 above ground.

Mulching later on will probably give me a couple more inches of white part also.

Thanks everybody.

Kevin