You dont say where you are, what your current temperatures are ??
Assuming your temperature are in 40F to 60F range(or higher), you can direct sow them, in your garden, in container.

Prepare the soil: Add some peat moss OR potting mix. Level it, lightly pack it/level. Now scatter the seeds. I would not worry about spacing at this time. You can always pull them out (when they are about 6') and space them as you want( 2 inch).

Once the seeds are scattered, cover them with about 1/4' to 3/8" potting mix. Pack lightly, water gently with watering can.

Now s the time to be patient. Depending on the soil temperature it can take from ONE week to 3 weeks. During this time, if it is sunny and dry, water it. The soil needs to stay moist.

Leeks is the easiest germinating and growing amongst the onions family of plants.

Seysonn I have the plants themselves, not the seeds. Thank you so much for the information about the seeds. It seems like I heard somebody way back say to put them in a trenchlike row and keep the soil pulled up around them. The only thing I could find in the search talked about the wild form of them, but they didn't call them leeks. I am in zone 5b Indiana. Temp today was in the seventies and we got a lot of rain in the latter part of the afternoon. Barb

I assume that they are in a pot in a cluster, that you bought from a nursery. Plant them separately 6 inches apart or so. Or a little closer if you plant on pulling out some young ones in between, while letting others get bigger.

As for what you are thinking about is the idea of trying to cover up the lower stem of the Leeks by making a trench so the Leeks grow taller and to blanch them so they are whiter. You don't have to do this, or can do it a little. Your Leeks will not be ruined if you don't fully trench, they will still be edible. You could make somewhat of a trench like a few inches, plant the Leeks in the middle, then once the plants start growing bigger fill in the trench with the dirt. I don't think you could trench too little, they will still grow and be edible, but if you trenched too much you would cover up too much of the leaves plus you could get dirt stuck inside the Leek layers making them very hard to clean.

Barb, don't worry about it too much, onion plants are very easy. Just do the best you can and look up in vegetable garden books for basics.

This post was edited by noki on Sat, May 10, 14 at 0:50

I use hay to blanch the leeks, and just pile on more around them as they grow. It works great and i don't have to deal with dirt down in the leaves. I always grow 'Bleu de Solaise', a very large and very hardy leek that I harvest late fall into winter.

I grow leeks in a shallow trench and backfill as they grow, being sure to keep the soil below the level of the lowest leaves to keep out dirt. Like Laceyvail, I add a thick layer of light weight organic mulch on top of that to help blanch the stems, particularly since too much soil makes them more difficult to harvest, while the organic mulch is lighter and so the leeks are easier to pull. The longer the bleached stem, the more of the leek is edible since the green parts are tough, so that is the advantage of mulching deeply. I harvest my leeks into late fall, but during most of the winter my garden is buried under deep snow (4' isn't unusual) and so I harvest any remaining leeks soon after the garden emerges from the snow, since once they bolt in the spring they are too tough to eat.

O, Trenching and filling !
You do that if you want WHITE stems. I personally don't bother wit that. GREEN is more nutritious. When I want to buy celery, I pick the most green one. They have better flavor. The same idea that they shade celery to prevent from getting green.

Personally I don't think it's just about white stems, it's about MORE stem. In my experience a leek not planted deeply or trenched will make less stem (yummy edible part) and more leaves (still yummy but less so).

I put a lot of leeks in a small amount of space (6"apart, 4 rows in a bed) and have found a way to avoid trenching/hilling and still get amazing long white stemmed leeks.

I seed leeks in open flats (800 plants in a 15"x16"x3" flat), then when they're big enough, I transplant them thickly into a nursery bed (2" apart, as dense as the bed is wide). They grow a month like this until about pencil thick. Then I dig them up and transplant them into their permanent bed 6"x6" spacing, as deep as I can, leaving only a few top leaves showing. This way there's no hilling or trenching and I get a lot more leeks in a smaller amount of space.

-Mark

Finished product:

This post was edited by madroneb on Sat, May 10, 14 at 15:27

Next photo is the leeks in their permanent bed:

I used to work with an Englishman who told me his father had white porcelain tubes that he grew competition quality leeks in. I guess you could use lengths of pvc pipes.

I tried just planting (as onions) and also trenching and it never worked very well for me.
This is what works great for me (to transplant):
take a screw driver (my substitution for a dibbler) and stick it in the ground, then move it in a circular motion to make the hole a little wider.
Wiggle the leek as deeply into the hole as you can.
That's it. The directions say "allow the hole to be filled in by irrigation and rainfall" so, there is nothing more to be done until months later, when I mulch with hay.

Here's the timing, in zone 5b (for me): sow seeds indoors in a pot in January.
Set out (as above) in April.
Mulch in fall.
Eat fresh until hard freeze, then I mulch heavily in the garden to have some all winter (except last winter, when they all froze :( )

I use a broken-off broomstick to the same effect.