MONTY DON

Follow these simple tips and you can grow magnificent celery at home, says Monty Don – and save yourself a few pennies in the process

Growing your own celery is easy, says our gardening expert, and you can even keep the plants over winter

Celery is a vegetable I just love growing. I love eating it too, but to be honest I would grow it even if I never munched a single stem – though I am doing rather a lot of that right now. If, like me, you’re currently enjoying your celery harvest, then bear in mind that you can keep your plants over winter. If the coming season is mild, they can stay in the ground until next spring – although they are biennial so will start to throw up flowering stems in spring as soon as the days lengthen and the weather gets warmer. If it is a harsh winter – and I’ll be cheering because it will go a long way to reducing many damaging bugs and fungal problems – then celery is best lifted and stored around the middle of November. The best way to do this is to dig up the plants with as much root as possible, replant them closely together in boxes of sand and put in a cool but frost-free dark place. As long as the roots have moisture they will keep this way for months.

If you are storing smaller quantities to eat, simply cut whole heads so they’re still attached as one piece to the base, trim off any roots and remove the foliage and any stems that are damaged, then remove any loose soil under a running tap. Store the heads inside a plastic bag in your fridge (being sure they do not freeze) and they should remain fresh and crisp for a couple of weeks.

My love of the plants partly goes back to my childhood when a celery trench one spit deep (a spade’s depth) and two spits wide would be neatly prepared with lots of garden compost or manure added to the bottom and the dirt that was dug out mounded on either side. Young celery plants were planted in two rows in this enriched trench floor. As they grew, the soil from the sides was mounded back in around them until it made a berm, or raised bank, with the celery leaves poking out in tufts. This way the stalks were kept from the light and when harvested would emerge blanched a pure white ready to be washed and served from the tall celery jar. This was filled with water so when you took a stem it was wet as well as crunchy.

It was not until some ten years ago I realised self-blanching celery, which needs no elaborate earthworks but is grown simply in blocks, could taste just as good. What is more significant, the trench celery was prone to attack by slugs in my heavy, wet soil. In fact, other than the fun of mak- ing the trenches and earthing up, self-blanching celery is a much better bet for most gardeners.

Although you can order your seeds now, celery should not be sown before April as if it germinates too early it will become prone to bolting. The seed is tiny, so you have to be careful to sow it as thinly as possible in a seed tray, then transplant seedlings to individual plugs. I grow these seedlings on with the protection of a cold frame until they’re about 8-10cm (3- 4in) high and then have to decide whether to plant them out in a grid about 23cm (9in) apart or pot them on. Obviously, planting out directly where they are going to grow saves time, trouble and compost. But celery does not like cold soil and if it sits, sulking and not growing, it’s likely to be eaten by slugs. So potting on into 8cm (3in) pots buys weeks of time for the soil to warm up and allows the plants to grow strongly – this year I didn’t plant them out until June.

Some straw placed between the plants in autumn both protects them and helps blanching – which stops them becoming bitter. However, once they are growing strongly they fare best with good drainage and lashings of water.

Monty with his celery