Giant Red celery is a fabulous and rewarding choice, full of flavour, reliable and very hardy. The dark green stems are flushed with strong red-pink tones and can be harvested from July (from a very early sowing) right on into the winter. Earthing up or using ready made collars will give the best results & colour… or you can just let them grow. Price for 50 seeds
SOW: from March to May using a seed tray & surface sow (or lightly cover with sand), keep the surface damp until germinated and then prick out as soon as large enough to do so. Delay hardening off until the weather warms (seedlings can bolt if the temperature falls below 10°C for 12 hours).
GROW in your garden a trench can be a spade deep & wide, fill with lots of rich manure or compost, backfill and mix with soil until 5 cm lower than the rest of the soil level (this helps retain moisture around the celery). This trench can be prepared in the autumn or spring. After hardening off plant out at the 5/6 leaf stage in a single row some 30-35cm apart. As they grow either earth up or add collars every 3-4 weeks removing sad leaves & sheltering critters (slugs and woodlice) as you do so! Don’t use black polythene as it is a slug magnet and can cause sweating stems that are then prone to rot. Home made collars are fine – thick paper sacking or brown craft paper work well. Tie with a bow to make it easy to undo when checking or changing the collar height. Remember to leave the leaves sticking out of the top of each collar. It is worth taking the time to do this for the stems will be a finer texture with better colour. If you just let them grow harvest them at an earlier tender younger stage from mid-summer
EAT: lift and use your trenched Giant Reds through the autumn and winter – salads, soups, casseroles…yum.
Your basket is empty.
