Sowing Celeriac

Soilman says we should be sowing celeriac, and as this was one of last year’s big hits, after Maurice gave us some seedlings, I am following Soilman’s advice by planting our seeds this weekend. It’s yet another crop that I’ve never grown from seed myself and what I’ve managed to find out is this:

Germination is a more than a bit little erratic so I shouldn’t expect all my seeds to come up (I do though, always, and always get disappointed when they don’t, even real sods like parsnip).

They shouldn’t be hardened off outside until it's properly warm because a sudden drop in temperature can force the plant to bolt which stops it becoming bulbous at the root.
When all risk of cold snaps is past, they should be planted out 40 cm apart and kept both watered and mulched as they like a moist environment and not too much sun. Given what a rotten summer we had last year, it’s not surprising that ours did rather well! What I didn’t do was remove the lower leaves to expose the bulbous root, but several experts do advocate this, so I might try removing half and leaving half (on different plants obviously, not half on each plant) to see what difference it makes.

They can be harvested from early autumn but don’t usually cope well with a frost so it’s important to have them really well covered with mulch if you want to leave them in the ground after November.

Labels: allotment-celeriac, allotment-crops, allotment-seeds