Fothergill's RHS Leek Porbella Vegetable Seeds

Details:

• Botanical Name: Allium porrum 'Porbella', a highly refined, premium-grade cultivar within the allium family.
• Plant Class: Hardy Biennial grown as an annual, establishing with exceptional seedling vigour to produce a robust, straight plant framework.
• Thick and Long Stems: Yields high amounts of uniform, solid shanks that blanch beautifully to create a generous, high-yielding kitchen crop.
• Advanced Rust Tolerance: Bred to feature excellent natural tolerance against leek rust, keeping the dark green foliage clean, healthy, and highly productive.
• Slow-To-Bolt Genetics: Exceptionally resilient against volatile winter weather, making it slow to run to seed and allowing the mature crop to stand firmly in the plot until you are ready to harvest.
• Extended Harvesting Window: Provides great cropping versatility, allowing the heavy stems to be lifted as required from October right through to February.
• Gourmet Flavour Profile: Packed with a rich, sweet, and mild flavour, with a meltingly tender texture that makes it a versatile ingredient for winter stews, traditional potato soups, or simple butter braises.
• Nutritional Value: A rewarding, health-boosting choice for allotments and vegetable beds, serving as a fantastic natural source of dietary fibre, vitamins, and antioxidants.

Care Instructions:

• Sowing Position: Choose a position with deep, fertile, and well-drained soil in full sun, raking the ground to a fine, crumbly tilth before planting to ensure optimum root development.
• Sowing Method: For a reliable autumn and winter crop, sow seeds thinly directly outdoors into a dedicated seedbed from March to April. Sow seeds 1.5cm deep in shallow rows spaced 30cm apart, keeping the soil consistently moist.
• Transplanting and Deep Blanching: When the young seedlings reach the thickness of a pencil, transplant them to their final outdoor positions by dropping them into holes 15cm deep spaced 15cm apart. Fill the holes with water rather than soil to allow the roots to anchor naturally, which encourages long, white stems.
• Harvesting Protocol: Lift the leeks carefully using a garden fork from October through to February as required, keeping the remaining plants in the ground to harvest fresh throughout the winter.