this week on digging deeper we're talking about leaks and how to
make them long and white and blanched and amazing
this week i want to share with you three tricks to have leaks that have really white
long blanche stems and this is the trick that we've been using for a lot of years
here at my home farm and this is the trick that i teach in the master class
but i have to say it's a trick that i got from my mentor and friend elliot elliott coleman an
amazing farmer i hope everybody knows who elliot is but in any case you can check him
out he wrote the book the new organic grower and he was my first inspiration to get into farming
and i've learned a bunch from him so the first trick is that we want to grow them really long in
the nursery so we start them in open flats we'll start them really early as soon as the we plant
the tomatoes or the peppers we start our leaks they'll be in the nursery for a long time and
the goal is to have leaks that are about at least 10 inch long and the second trick is to poke holes
that are a good nine inch deep into the ground then we're dropping the leaks in there and
then that almost guarantees that you'll have nine inch of blanche white stem which should be enough
so that's really the second trick is to poke a hole and so we're burying the leaves we're not
just healing them we're burying them as as a first step the third trick is to cover them with straw
once they've established themselves and the roots are there and you you've uh make sure
that you know they're growing then we'll straw them and then which will add another layer
of absence of light because they get blanched because there's no light so by
putting straw over them we're adding another few more inch and in the end when we're ready
to harvest we have leaks that are really really long with blanche stems that are amazing which
will make chefs and anyone that knows the quality of veggies anyone that's interested in really high
high quality veggies will appreciate all the effort that are put to grow leagues like these
before before i stop this i want to riff a little bit about what i talked about in the first like
having elliot show me this trick and i think that in our small-scale farming community in
the market gardening world sharing tricks and tips and learning how to do these things learning how
to optimize production in space and time is really the name of the game and i for one am very humbled
by all the all the pioneers that were there before me that paved the way and that really gave
me not just tricks and tips about how to grow but created a whole universe for for us to operate and
i think that's a big part of being a market gardener is being in this open source community
where people are sharing obviously a lot of my work uh sharing expertise uh comes with a price
with the master class buying my book whatever because there's a lot of work that goes into that
producing this in the end the game is to make sure that people that are growing
have the best possible strategies to make sure that they're not wasting any time and that they're
doing high quality stuff which is how you become a great market gardener so this is it for this week
sorry about the noise guys it was a really windy day and we figured that regardless you
guys will appreciate the info that we're sharing so don't forget to subscribe and don't forget if
you want to learn more about how i farm check out the market gardeners master class and check
out the courses that we give at the institute there's a lot to learn and i'm excited about
sharing it so hope things are growing hope you guys are well and i'll see you next week jm out
you