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THOUGH GROWING CELERY has been made a lot easier with the arrival of self-blanching varieties, it’s still a tricky enough prospect to grow well. But stick with it and it will reward you mightily.
Celery is incredibly good for you – it benefits your nerves and can reduce blood pressure. A staple “stock-pot” veg, it tastes great raw and freezes well too.
Growing celery was traditionally labour intensive because trenches had to be prepared to grow them in and then the celery had to be regularly earthed up to blanch or whiten the stems.
Most GIYers now grow self-blanching (green) celery which does not require earthing up or trenching. Happy days.
Sowing
Celery is very slow to get started, taking eight weeks between sowing and planting out. It’s also semi-tender so you want to aim to be planting out in May.
Sow seeds in a 10cm pot from March on and keep it on a windowsill inside – it will take about two weeks to germinate. Do not cover the seeds in soil – they need light to germinate.
Prick out in to module trays (one seedling per module) with fresh compost about a week later. Plant out when the seedlings have four to six true leaves, but harden off before planting out.
Successional sowing is a good idea with celery since they don’t stand so well in the ground once ready – sow some seeds every month in March, April and May.
Growing
Dig the bed in the winter and add plenty of well rotted manure or compost. Add organic fertiliser (eg chicken manure pellets) before planting.
Blanching celery makes the stems go white and more tender. Even “self-blanching” varieties benefit from blanching.
Self-blanching celery is typically planted 25cm apart in blocks rather than in rows, so the plants shade each other from light (thereby improving the blanching process).
Water celery well in dry weather – it’s a thirsty plant and if the soil dries out the stems won’t swell. If leaves go yellow, apply an organic feed (e.g. nettle or comfrey tea or a top dressing of poultry manure pellets).
Harvesting
Celery will be ready in around 40 weeks – usually August to October. Lift as required but finish harvesting when frosts arrive.
Use a fork to gently lift the plant, roots and all. A head of celery will keep in the fridge for up to three days.
Recommended varieties
Victoria, Tall Utah, Daybreak
Problems
Slugs like it. Also prone to celery leaf miner (tiny maggots that cause leaf blisters) and leaf spot (brown spots on leaf that look like blight).
GIY tips
Michael Kelly is a freelance journalist, author and founder of GIY.
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A shortage!?! Lettuce pray!
It’s ridiculous that Ireland can’t supply herself with salad and vegetables. The country has great land and weather for such produce. We should be easily self sufficient . We should be able to supply Europe too! The likes of Tesco Ireland should only sell home grown produce.
The weather is not right , 12 months of the year . We depend on Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere produce based on seasonality to supplement what we can produce.
@Niall O’Reilly:Try growing lettuce during wintertime in Ireland.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: No problem, its growing in the Botanical gardens in Dublin outside right now. Even easier in a tunnel.
@Colm Vambeck:- Correct. There are a lot of farmers in North County Dublin / Meath areas that grow lettuce through out the year. Then Keelings by the Airport have Gigantic greenhouses that grow peppers, lettuces, berries and all other types of veg you would think wouldn’t be plausible to grow in Ireland. They actually have an excellent Farm Shop at their entrance on the St. Margerets Road. (Finglas to Swords )
@The Viking:
Price……
There will always be a market for homegrown greenhouse vegetables and some people will pay a premium for them but the vast majority will buy the cheapest available.
Best of luck to the Keeling’s in their shop by the way.
Nonsense. We can grow everything in Ireland. You just need a greenhouse or a plastic tunnel. In Iceland they are self sufficient in tomatoes and cucumbers and my neighbor here in Brittany has 100 oranges on his orange tree in a climate often colder than Ireland!
Have you heard of a green house.?No problem at all under glass.
@Richard Paul: In a wee greenhouse (6 x 10) in the south of the country, we have all salad ingredients for our house all year around. We are still eating the spuds, carrots, parsnips and more from the wee veg plot. Hadn’t bought a spud in 5 years.
@ Paul Somers; Fair Play to you If it is practical for you to do that . But certain produce can not be grown in Ireland, in the quantities needed to satisfy the demand for them.
Sorry who buys more than one in one go?!
@Paul: People buying for a family.
@Paul:
Harvey the rabbit??
@Paul:
That new chain of shops, Chopped?
Be interesting to see what they substitute lettuce with now.
Restaurants, Pubs, Cafe’s
A number of local establishments purchase salad ingredients in Aldi / Lidi as the cost is sometimes below ‘Musgrave’s’ price point.
This is a great day for salad dodgers
Just have a bloody salad without lettuce. A salad with sausages and rashers and eggs and pudding. A salad with no salad.
Managed to buy some from a shady character on Moore street . Bit pricey though, €5 for a half dozen lettuce leaves and €7.50 for a reasonably sized courgette.
I’d say the Kinahans and the Hutches are repurposing the grow houses as we speak ….
RIP to all the poor slippy slugs
lettuce spray…
So busy giving out to super valu the farmers forgot about the poor oll lettuce
I blame vegetarians for eating all our side salads for their main courses.
Went to Supervalue, Tesco’s and Aldi looking for courgettes. Lidl is the only place you can get them.
Swear to God, I was blaming bloody operation transformation !
Woa muah gawd, cannot cope, like whats a B.L.T. without the L. :(
And I’m a vegan so no B either. :((
Didn’t take long for someone to announce they were vegan did it
Simply weather related.
Do we not grow it here?
Iceberg hopefully… its the marmite of lettii
@Hugh Gallagher: At least Jamie Oliver had the right idea with Iceburg lettuce…put them in a clay trap and blast them with No.7 shot. It’s a veg designed for supermarkets and catering due to lasting longer than most people who eat it.
Leaf it out will ye!
Ah..sure I can see it now “garda raid grow house..”(surely it’s herbal and illegal) ..garda looks sad and says “nah tis only lettuce..feck it”
Nothing of nutritional value in lettuce anyway
have your say