Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi,

I tried celery in my first year, as a bit of a novelty - it smelt and tasted great, but was tough so only good for stews. Haven't tried since.

However, I started some seeds off a month or so ago in the window. I've had good germination and have just transferred into individual pots. The variety I chose was greensleeves as it had a good description, and was supposedly stringless. Has anyone tried this variety? Am I correct in thinking it is not self blanching and I will need to think about wrapping them with paper (rather Han spacing closely in blocks as per my previous attempt)?

Any tips would be much appreciated.

Pawty

Bumping this one up the que ...... They're looking good and will be going in the raised bed in a couple weeks.

Anyone has any experience with this variety?

Pawty

Hope you do well with them Pawty!

I don't even bother now, mostly get the same result as you had but still not wasted, as even though stalks are small they are quite strong in flavour. Have to remove the strings though which makes it a bit fiddly. One year was looking promising, to the extent I wrapped them in cardboard - was a slug motel to the extent nothing was salvageable!

Westi

Hi Westi,
Trench Celery used to be a specialty of mine and at the wrapping stage we used to use coal soot to deter the slugs which was very successful but nowadays with no coal fires no coal soot available. People still use coal fires so if you can find somebody local and you can get some soot you may have success. I don't know of any other treatment.
JB.

Morning J.B.,
My Grandfathers,Father and Uncle used to put soot in their potato trenches to deter slugs and it,like with your celery,did the job and they very rarely had slug damaged potatoes.

Hi Snooky,
Nice to hear from you after quite a while. You have even moved house!
Coal soot was used extensively in vegetable growing. It is great for knocking out invasion by keeled slugs, the buggers that have your spuds and other root vegetables. To be honest I don't know if soot was simply a deterant or it actually killed slugs or probably a bit of both.
Sincerely,
JB.