Wahoooo! It’s third time lucky for me and celeriac. We just never really managed to make it work before so I am delighted to report that I have 4 really great-looking, well-sized celeriac growing in my veg patch (the other 6 regrettably succumbed to the will of slugs in the very early days, when they were just mere seedlings). I can’t wait to harvest them and cook them up for my first taste of homegrown celeriac this winter.
So, what has been the secret of my success, I hear you ask…well, I’m putting it down to no-dig. I planted the seedlings into a no-dig bed that had been topped with a good 10cm layer of well-rotted manure, and I think this has really helped it for two reasons. Firstly, I think it was really nutrient rich, and secondly (and probably more importantly) I think it helped lock the moisture in, even in the dry summer that we had. Celeriac is notorious for needing a lot of water, but I didn’t give them any more than my other plants, and yet the roots have just kept on swelling and getting bigger. I’m genuinely over the moon! Sad, I know, but the other years when the crops failed to swell were so disappointing. The only thing I did differently was to go no-dig, so it must be the reason they’ve grown so well this time.