My allotment in Liverpool

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Grow your own Celeriac with ease

CELERIAC

Growing celeriac can be difficult

My Liverpool Site

How to grow Celeriac

Allotment home page

A sometimes tricky crop that if kept well watered, with patience will produce a delicious vegetable to keep you going all winter long from mid August onwards.

Finding an allotment

Starting your plot

Look at my plot

Building raised beds

Compost bins

VEGETABLE INDEX

SEE MY PLOT ON YouTube Feb 2007

Plant seeds in heat early as germination is slow. This photograph shows seedlings on 10th March after sowing on 1st February. These were grown in a cool greenhouse in a propagator and by the 7th April were big enough to transplant into 3 inch (7cm) pots.

Once transplanted the plants grew rapidly despite no longer being in the propagator, although they were still in the cool greenhouse, and in only 3 weeks, on the 28th April,  were ready to go into their final bed.

The plants were spaced about 14 inches (35 cm apart and 24 fitted in a 6x8 foot raised bed. It is important to keep them moist at all times. 2007 was a wet summer and no watering was necessary. They are bog plants and water is essential.

SEE MY PLOT ON YouTube Feb 2008

SEE MY PLOT ON YouTube Aug 2008

22nd May and the plants are growing quickly. There were 95mm of rain in May 2007, although the shot above was taken 5 days after heavy rain and it looks dry.

7th June and the bulbs are beginning to swell. To keep them tidy I pulled the outer leaves off as they were forced onto the ground, this made weeding easier.

28th August. I pulled the first root on 19th August, weighing 220 grams. They grew so much over the next few months that the heaviest was 933 grams and that was the pepared weight!

This healthy specimen shows the rather gnarled root and the untidy growth. In total the crop from an 8x4 foot bed was over 12.5 Kg of prepared roots, harvested between 19th August and the 18th April, exactly 6 months of fresh crop. The shot on the left shows how I like to keep them trimmed and weed-free. Note all the compost in the soil!

This is the 933 gram peeled root which weighed well over 1KG unprepared. Delicious cut up and roasted, or mashed alone like potato, mixed  with mashed potato, as a soup, or grated raw into salad.