Growers fight recession and bad weather: Despite a tough economic climate and adverse weather, demand for alliums is growing

摘要

At the start of January the ground across leek and onion fields in areas such as Lincolnshire were under several inches of snow. The weight of snow caused the thin stems of leeks to collapse and led to rotting. The cold broke down the outer skins of the leeks, so that in many cases they were simply not worth harvesting. "By the time we'd taken off the top four of layers of skins, there was very little left. Some of the leeks had rotted from the inside. In the end we just took the decision to leave them in the fields," says Mervyn Casey ofWillow Farm in Lincolnshire, one of the country's largest leek growers.