Ramps (Wild Leek)

Plant bulbs about 3 inches deep and 4 to 6 inches apart, keeping just the very tip of the bulb above the soil surface. Lift and handle them with as little root damage as you can, and replant the same day. September through March all work, but February and March are best. Bulbs planted while the ground is workable and the plant is still dormant root in before the short spring window opens, and bulbs over half an inch across give a harvestable plant in two to three years instead of the five to seven that seed demands.

From the time leaves push up, check leaf tops in the cool of the morning for a characteristic linear series of round wounds. That is the female feeding and laying, and it is far easier to spot than the fly itself. Daffodil and forsythia bloom mark the start of the flight, which runs 5 to 7 weeks. If you have had damage before, exclusion netting laid down before the flight begins gives complete protection. Allium leaf miner overwinters as a pupa in leaf tissue and soil and runs a spring generation and a fall one. The larva mines inside the leaf, so once it is in, the leaf you were going to eat is the damaged part. The other thing you will see on ramps, Septoria leaf spot, is unsightly but does little real harm; this is the one that costs you the crop.

Digging bulbs is a different act from picking a leaf. In a planted patch, take no more than 15 percent in a year. In a wild stand, research supports 5 to 10 percent at most. If you clear a plot outright, put it on a 5 to 7 year rotation and dig a different plot each year. Always leave plants standing to flower and set seed. Ramps take five to seven years to reach flowering age, so a dug bulb is not replaced for most of a decade. Overharvest is exactly why wild populations of Allium tricoccum and A. burdickii have declined across eastern forests, and a patch mined faster than it recruits does not come back.

Cut a single leaf per plant at soil level while the foliage is still tender and the tree canopy is still open. Leave the rest of the foliage and the bulb in the ground. Never strip a plant bare. A ramp carries only one to three leaves and has a few short weeks to bank a year of sugar before the canopy closes over it and shuts down photosynthesis. Every leaf you take is subtracted from next year's bulb. Taking one and walking away lets the plant finish its season.

From late summer through early fall, sow seed thinly on a prepared shady seedbed, press it gently into the soil rather than burying it, and cover the bed with several inches of hardwood leaves. Expect nothing for the first spring. Germination takes 6 to 18 months and often straddles two growing seasons. Ramp seed carries a dormant, under-developed embryo. It needs a warm moist period to break root dormancy and then a cold period to break shoot dormancy, so a fall sowing hands the seed both cues in the right order. Fall-sown seed germinates better than spring-sown, and seed sown in a forest setting outperforms seed under artificial shade or in the open.

Rake 2 to 3 inches of hardwood leaves over the patch each fall. Beech, maple, birch and poplar leaves are ideal. Do not substitute pine bark or bagged commercial mulches. Leaf litter is the soil ramps evolved in. It holds moisture through the year, feeds the bed as it rots, buffers the bulbs through winter, hides seed from wildlife, and suppresses the weeds that otherwise outrun a slow plant.

Test the bed before planting. Ramps want a pH between 4.7 and 6.7 and will not thank you for lime once pH is above 4.9. Where calcium is short, work in about 100 pounds of gypsum per 1,000 square feet, along with composted leaves and other decaying plant material. Ramps are a calcium-hungry plant of rich limestone-influenced woods, but they are also an acid-soil plant. Gypsum is calcium sulfate, so it supplies the calcium without pushing pH up the way lime does. Their real fertility comes from decomposing hardwood leaf litter, not from a bag.