Medwyn Williams prepares to plant celery outdoors
Allow them to harden off first before planting in their final positions outside
When Dr Peter Dawson started hybridising celery for me a few years ago, we decided to go with four different selections, with each one having ‘Ideal’ as a parent line, which was crossed with different self-blanching varieties. The self-blanching varieties were selections from Dr Dawson’s breeding programme that had good girth and a large petiole length. The varieties were named as ‘Starburst’, ‘Evening Star’, ‘Morning Star’ and ‘Red Star’. The breeder eventually dropped ‘Red Star’ and ‘Morning Star’ so I’m currently left with ‘Starburst’ and ‘Evening Star’.
The variety I’m growing again this season for Malvern is ‘Evening Star’ in preference to ‘Starburst’, as it does give me more weight and looked quite impressive at the back of the stand last September. I sowed seed on March 5 and when ready I moved the seedlings into 50-cell trays then 1-litre pots. They’re now in 2-litre pots in a compost mixture made up of a bag of Humax MultiPurpose plus 10 litres of sieved soil from last year’s celery bed. I dug this soil up last October and barrowed into the tunnel to dry out.
There’s no doubt that celery loves well-rotted manure and to this end I have the perfect solution. I’ve some very old horse manure that has been kept under a polythene sheet for a couple of years. I filled the celery bed two months ago using my best soil from the land in layers with the manure, as well as a scattering of ground limestone on top of the soil. I now have the celery outdoors acclimatising on some benching just outside the tunnel.
When hardened off a little, I’ll plant them up in two rows of eight with 38cm (15in) between each plant. Later this week I’ll apply Medwyn’s base fertiliser at 135g per sq m (4oz per sq yd) as well as the same measure of Nutrimate. I’ll rotavate the bed and hopefully, weather permitting, I can plant the celery next week.
Why not follow me on Twitter throughout the season as I grow vegetables for my display at Malvern – @medwynsofangles.