The best part about an online magazine, is that they send you emails only if you want them. And in the case of Saveur, I get tasty recipes to try on a regular basis. Last week, a number of recipes for a Summer Vegetarian Feast filled my email inbox. One was a delicious leek and zucchini galette, combining great flavor and seasonality.
There are leeks growing alongside my onions in some fields. Some of the growers I work with have a few different Allium species growing including garlic and leek. These crops could be subject to leek moth infestation, but leek moth is currently only known in certain areas of New York and Canada (in North America). An invasive species from Europe, leek moth, Acrolepiopsis assectella, is a small, brown to black moth with yellow-green caterpillars. The pupae are small cocoons with a distinct lacy casing.
Leek moth damage include mining and perforations in the leaf, with window-paning damage where the caterpillar has not eaten all the way through all layers of the leaf tissue.
While there are no chemical treatments yet in New York, cultural treatments such as crop rotation, row covers, and removing vegetative debris at the end of the season are recommended. In Canada, a parasitoid wasp Diadromus pulchellus was released as a biological control agent as part of an integrated pest management approach to control leek moth. Perhaps that may be an option for leek moth control here as well.