The celery tasting report

Okay, I’m having to admit a bit a failure here. The celery was a rather a bust. I think I need to do a lot more research into what you need to do to grow good celery!

The thing is, it has a fantastic flavour, but it’s very fibrous – even the blanched version. I suspect our mistake may have been not enough watering to boost the water-holding cells in the plant or possibly too much wind-chill (leaves get tougher when exposed to windy conditions so I think celery stems might too) but the good news is that the root (which in certain varieties is all the plant is grown for, at which point it gets called celeriac) takes absolutely wonderful!

So although the blanched stems are yellower and softer than the unblanched ones, they still haven’t produced the kind of celery you’d happily munch on with a slab of double Gloucester. On the other hand, they do make a great braised celery …

BRAISED CELERY RECIPE

Chop some onions and carrots into a pan and add enough vegetable stock to half-cover the vegetables. Bring to the boil and transfer to a slow cooker. Wash the celery and cut into manageable lengths (assume the person eating it will want to cut each piece in half to get it onto their mouth!) and place the celery on top of the veggies. Baste some of the stock over the celery. Cook on low for between 3 and 5 hours or until the celery is very tender, basting with the stock from time to time. Remove the celery from the pan with a perforated spoon and place in a serving dish. Drain the cooking liquid into a small pan and add 1 teaspoon of cooking wine then boil until it is reduced to a thin glaze and pour over the celery

Labels: allotment-celery, allotment-crops, allotment-failures, allotment-problems, allotment-recipes

Celery stories

As I said many months ago, Maurice was kind enough to give us some celery seedlings when we first got our plot, but he didn’t know if they were self-blanching or not. As a result, after I planted them, I didn’t know if I needed to blanch them or not!

I only lost one of the nine, to slugs, so I was left with eight quite vigorous celery plants and a decision to make. To blanch or not to blanch? I decided to hedge my bets and blanch three. Unblanched celery has a deeper green colour and a stronger flavour than blanched celery, and it's higher in vitamins and minerals, but a lot of people prefer the taste of blanched celery which is softer and sweeter. There are a number of ways to blanch – you can rest boards along each side of the row to block the light: which is easy but can lead to slug infestation and we have far too many slugs to take the risk. Or you can raise up soil or mulch around the plant to block out the sun: I didn’t fancy this, as I was sure it would make the stalks difficult to clean – I remember my mum complaining about having to scrub celery when I was a kiddie - and also there’s a risk of rotting when plants are blanched with soil.

So I went with the easiest option: cutting the tops and bottoms off plastic bottles and cartons and using them as collars. I cover three plants about a week ago and apparently after a week to 10 days the stalks will lighten because the compression of the collar has excluded the sun from all the inner layers, and their flavour will become milder. So I shall go up before the weekend and do a comparison …

Labels: allotment-celery, allotment-crops, allotment-harvest

New allotments – slug damage

How everybody hates the slug (except hedgehogs perhaps) and how little there is you can do about the beast! I lost one of my celery plants to slugs yesterday and at least six of the brassicas Duncan put in have been eaten back to the stem in a single night – not much chance of any of them surviving. Not all the brassicas are labelled and some went in before we became co-workers, so I’m guessing from the stems what these were and I think they were purple sprouting broccoli, a particular favourite of mine, which makes it even more annoying.

The usual routes for slug prevention are slug pellets or slug traps. The former is simple but works out as quite an expense if you have to ‘protect’ an entire allotment and may harm wildlife. The latter is cheaper but time-consuming and if, like me, you’re fastidious (not a good allotment trait) it becomes increasingly horrible to empty the drowned slugs out of the traps and refill them.

Another route is the nematode, a parasitic creature of microscopic size that is watered into the soil where it searches out slugs and creeps inside them (think of the alien inside John Hurt in the film Alien and you’ve got the picture). Once inside, the nematode releases a bacterium which it feeds on and as that bacterium multiplies, the slug dies. The nematodes multiply inside the slug and within 3-5 days the slug stops feeding and will burrow underground to die. As the slug decomposes in the soil, the nematodes are released back into the soil to search out more slugs. I’m thinking we might have to order some.

Here’s the problem though – a lot of our plot is covered in black planting membrane through which holes have been cut for the seedlings – I can’t find any information about whether nematodes will work in those circumstances. Normally you water them across the whole growing area with a watering can and they burrow down into the soil – so will it work if you just pour the nematode water through the small holes in the black plastic? I don’t know, and nobody seems to be able to tell me.

Labels: allotment-brassicas, allotment-celery, allotment-nematode, allotment-slug

Celery – an allotment crop to fear

Hmmmm … Maurice gave us celery seedlings. Now I do love celery, especially fresh with a good slice of a local sheep’s milk cheese or braised with carrots in a chicken stock topped with cheddar. But ...



...it is supposed to be a b***** to grow.

The first thing my reference books tell me is that rotationally it should be included with potatoes, which rather scotches the idea I’d had of digging up our row of first early spuds and putting the celery in there – but as we have nowhere else to put it, it may be the only option. The second thing that I’m told is that at least I might be getting the timing right for once

I learn that it prefers rich soil, stuffed with organic matter, that will hold moisture but offers good drainage – well, well, well, in other words, the best of all possible worlds; and it does well in wet locations – so far we’ve no idea if we have any wet locations because it hasn’t been wet enough to assess the plot.

Onward! Celery is a heavy feeder and needs plenty of fertiliser for quick growth, says the book – well I’m not sure I want quick growth. I want tasty celery and I’m prepared to wait for it.

Celery will be bitter if it isn't blanched. Ah, but since my book was published in 1972 (the old ones are still the best in many ways) new self-blanching varieties have come onto the market. But which do we have? Answer, we don’t know. So I’ve fired off a quick email to Maurice, to ask, and will await his reply. Blanching is achieved by covering the plants to protect them from the sun. Okay, that I understand. As the plants grow, pile soil up around them to blanch the stems. Maybe so, or maybe just tie brown paper around them, particularly if they are self blanching? I saw that done at the BBC garden at Berryfields and it looked both elegant and much less work than damping soil and making cones around plants. Still I shall have to wait for Maurice to reply. Meantime I shall ponder the wisdom of jumping in at the deep end.

Carrots and celery courtesy of Steffenz

Labels: allotment-blanching, allotment-celery, allotment-seedlings