The Big Reveal
The big reveal of digging your harvest out of the ground never stops being exciting.
Your Leeks have endured:
- Settling into the outdoors,
- Growing in three seasons of weather,
- Growing in dry, warm soil,
- Growing in soggy cold, wet soil,
- Pests & diseases, (hopefully nothing fatal),
- Slowly forming its eagerly anticipated white fattened stem.
We wait patiently for approximately 7 months to harvest a Leek and this is the satisfying moment where we get to dig them out of their snug ground.
The Reward
Every vegetable harvested is a reward, some like root vegetables and leeks are a buried treasure!
We work so hard preparing the ground for the best growing conditions and then reply on ‘hope’ that your harvest may be the best one yet!
Why is the feeling of Hope so Powerful?
Hope is a motivation, a strength, a resilience. It motivates us to think forward to positive outcomes even when things seem impossible.
The feeling of Hope is energising and exciting, it’s the feeling you get when you sow your first seeds and when you harvest vegetables you have been nurturing for months.
Hope is a very powerful feeling and its causes the brain to release neurochemicals like endorphins.
Hope dampens anxiety in the brain, it makes you feel you can tackle anything and helps you persevere through difficult times.
How does the feeling of Hope relate to me as a vegetable grower?
When you sow your first seed or harvest your vegetables, hope is activated in your brain.
Hope is what keeps gardeners growing. Hope helps when crops fail or don’t turn out as we expected. It helps us strive for a better harvest next time because there’s always hope for the future.
Back to the Harvest Reward
Harvests should be celebrated and have been throughout history in the form of Harvest Festivals.
These festivals were to celebrate the last harvest in farmers fields of the year in September or October.
Schools and churches still celebrate Harvest Festival in the UK today in the form of singing and decorating with harvest baskets full of fruit and vegetables.
A list of Harvest Festivals and how they are celebrated around the world can be found here.
Leek Growing FactFile
- Variety: Oarsman F1
- Sow Seeds: Early March in root-trainers,
- Planted out in Raised Bed: Early May,
- Leek Stem fattening: Early July,
- Harvest Period: Late September to November.
