The odd couple!
Tricky celery and knobbly celeriac may not be your first thoughts for the garden, but are well worth the effort, says Monty Don
WHEN I was growing up, celery wa s served almost invariably as a summer salad vegetable – and it is very good like this. But cooked celery enriches almost any soup or stew, as well as being tasty in its own right.
Celery and its close relative celeriac are both delicious now. Celeriac is cultivated for the swollen, knobbly base of the stem and should be thought of in the same way as a carrot or parsnip (although it needs much richer soil than either of them). It did not reach this country until the late 1720s and has never really entered the popular culinary imagination. It is an earthy, rooty thing but delicate and delicious when cooked and very nutritious, unlike celery, which, when tough, probably needs more energy to digest than it supplies.
Neither crop is entirely straightforward to grow, but they’re hardly difficult. I sow the seeds of both in March and put them on a heated mat to germinate. The initial seedlings are tiny and when large enough to handle I prick them out into plugs and keep them growing under cover until May. It is important then to harden them off properly for a couple of weeks before planting out.
CELERY occurs in Asia and Europe in marshy, boggy ground and the secret of both crops is a constant supply of water. I used to put young celery plants in a trench in a double row with about 23cm between each plant. Then, when the shoots rose above the top of the trench, I filled the soil from the ridges back round them so that only a little green leafy topknot showed. This created a kind of earthen clamp around the maturing hearts which protected and blanched them. But now I only grow self-blanching kinds, which are planted onto the surface in a block, shading each other and so blanching the stems. Blanching is necessary to make the stems sweeter and more tender by blocking out light (it also works with endive, cardoon stems and forced rhubarb). You only need to do this for about two weeks before harvesting, and it can be done by wrapping newspaper or cardboard around the stems – but I find planting in a block works perfectly well.
Celeriac is, in many ways, easier to grow than celery, although it does take longer to establish a harvestable crop. The swollen base does not develop until the leaves are well established, and needs good-quality soil and plenty of water. Soil with lots of organic matter will make a huge difference both in retaining water and in helping it to develop a really good root system that will grow deep to find all available moisture, and this can dramatically reduce the watering you need to do. I sow the seeds in March. They are tiny, like those of celery, so I scatter them thinly on a seed tray – do not cover them – and then prick them out into o plugs. plugs These then get potted on into 7.5cm pots. Although celeriac is quite hardy, it is a mistake to put it outside too early because it will not grow in cold soil – and while it sits, waiting, like the rest of us, for spring warmth, the slugs tuck into it with relish. relish So I wait until mid-May before planting mine out 30cm or so apart in blocks or rows.
If the weather turns really cold, both celery and celeriac can be protected by mulching with a thick th layer of straw or bracken, although al one Christmas I had to dig d celeriac out of the frozen ground gr with a pickaxe. It was not ideal id — but at least we were able to make celeriac purée to go with our ou festive turkey. It is an excellent le combination.