IT’S many years since I’ve written about leeks in this column and, to be honest, I’m not writing about them this month either. 

Embarrassment is part of the reason. In the past I’ve described leeks as the one crop you’ll never go wrong with — a vegetable that’s guaranteed to perform well in any conditions, but the leek has recently become a much more difficult prospect. 

Two serious problems, the leek moth and the allium leaf miner, are spreading rapidly through Britain, seemingly assisted by climate change.

If you are struggling with your leeks these days, there is an answer. Babington’s leek  — known to science as Allium ampeloprasum var babingtonii and sometimes listed in seed catalogues as perennial leek, wild leek, Welsh leek or Babington leek without the apostrophe or the “s” — is a British native hardy perennial, still found growing wild in some coastal areas. 

It’s not really a leek, botanically, but it looks as if it is and for culinary purposes it can be made to imitate one.

I’ve grown it for more than 20 years and have never yet known it to suffer from any pests or diseases, even when every other member of the onion family in my garden has been wilting and wailing. 

Babington grows in sun or partial shade, in rich soil or poor, rarely needs weeding and never needs watering or feeding.

It’s also a dual-purpose vegetable. Through winter in milder areas, and in spring everywhere, the young shoots are harvested by slicing them off at ground level, for use in exactly the same way as you would use leeks. 

The shoots will regrow, but, as spring progresses, they’ll become too fibrous to eat. In autumn you can dig up the bulbs, which make an excellent, if milder-flavoured substitute for garlic. 

To get a longer white part to the stem, dig up the whole plant from late autumn to mid-spring and you can then use the bulb as well.

Young plants are available online, at about a fiver each, for planting out in early summer or, more economically, you can buy packets of “seeds” — actually bulbils — in autumn. Let your Babingtons grow on for one or two years while they get to a useable size.

In summer, Babingtons will put up large ornamental flower heads, held several feet off the ground, with purple flowers followed by lots of tiny bulbils. 

Eventually the head will topple over and the bulbils will root where they touch the soil. You can intervene earlier by taking them off the plant as they sprout and potting them up to start new plants.

There’s an even easier way to increase your stock of Babingtons, though. When you lift the autumn bulb, you’ll find several bulblets, with hard, brown skins, clustered around it. 

I immediately replant these by dropping them on the ground roughly where I want them to grow, and leaving them alone. That is literally all there is to it.

Can you help Mat get his new gardening book published? See the crowd-funding video at: unbound.com/books/eat-your-front-garden.