Celeriac

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Does anyone grow celeriac (celery root)? Can you give me a short tutorial about growing and storing it? Does it store until spring in the ground? Is it short season enough that I could attempt direct seeding it here with about a 100 frost free growing season?

[bertiefox]

I usually grow celeriac but it is extremely difficult to get it to produce the really large bulbs/roots that you see in the supermarket. As it is really a variety of celery, it's water requirements are equivalent if not greater, and it likes a very rich but well drained soil.
Usually you start off the seed under cover as the seedlings are very small and fragile. I've never tried direct seeding though the thinning would be one of the greatest problems I'd think. I would think even on your growing scale it would be more practical to grow it in modules and then station plant the modules once the frosts are over.
To get the larger heads you need to remove any side growths around the roots in summer, also quite time consuming and labour intensive.
I don't know how cold your winters are, but with frost the roots tend to go mushy. Although our winter has been fairly mild this year, of a bed of celeriac only two are still showing growth of new shoots, the rest having rotted away completely. Maybe covering the roots with straw to protect them would work, but I think pulling them in autumn and storing them in sand in a frost free place would be preferable..

[heidihi]

I have never grown enough to store so I can not answer I always figured from the way it looked/tasted when it was in the grocery store ...I would just enjoy it as it came and so I grow just a small amount to have in salads .. and really when it is ready there is nothing more wonderful than a fresh celery root salad with a wonderful light chive vinegar some olive oil salt and fresh cracked pepper ..aged slivered provolone and a tiny squeeze of fresh lemon juice

I am sure you can store it well and do just fine ..people must! it seems if you can keep it from rotting it would be a very hardy thing!

[ottawagardener]

I can tell you my experiences.

Celeriac needs to be started early, like 10 weeks before last frost. Surface sow the seeds as they are very small and keep the seed bed moist (as per usual). They can be planted out sometime around the last frost date I suppose. I normally stick them out when the air and soil are warm. They seem to handle light frosts just fine as juveniles. You wouldn't want to accidentally vernalize them as they are biennial bolters. Grow in an area that provides moisture and fertility if possible for best growth. Mine do form decent sized bulbs though not gigantic. On average, I'd say they are about half the size of the grocery store ones. For me, they did overwinter in the soil though we get/got good snow cover BUT they also store nicely in a bed of moist sand overwinter. The second year plants throw up tidy seed stalks but the seed ripens unevenly and are very tiny so you have to be vigilant about collecting it. Some people might harvest the seed head for ripening inside. I've never done this as I've only had the opportunity to collect seed once so far so no experimenting. Normally, I hold the seed bag under the seed stalk and rub the ripe seed in between my fingers to remove.

Other people, feel free to correct my groggy morning post but that's my recollection!

[mnjrutherford]

Patrick is knowledgeable about celeriac. He tried diligently to coach me... Here's his post: www.patnsteph.net/weblog/2007/01/celariac-secrets/

[1066]

thanks for posting the link, I'm trying to grow Celeriac for the 1st time, and judging by its watering needs, will need all the luck I can get!

[seedywen]

Getting ready to plant out my first celeriac plants. Thanks for giving out Patrick's link. Two years ago grew Red Plume celery, a cutting leaf variety. Let three plants go to seed and thought that my garden might then have millions of celery 'weeds'. So far, no seedlings? However it has been an unusually wet and cool spring so maybe the celery seedlings are still biding their time in the soil.

[mnjrutherford]

I've not gotten back to celeriac yet. I'm really glad to hear that Patrick's write up on the topic has been helpful for you. He's an excellent tech writer.

[12540dumont]

Joseph, I start mine in flats, transplant about now, I plant on the side of the farm that the water drains to. I grow both celeriac and celery herb. The seeds for celeriac that I got from Solstice Seed were very very good. I harvest as late in the fall as I can, and sometimes wait until early spring. My roots were pretty big, close to grocery store size. My CSA really liked them. I stored them just like potatoes (but not near the potatoes) just in case they off gassed. They wanted water all summer. Thirsty buggers.

This is the first year with Celery Herb from Long Island Island Seed Project.

Regular celery does not do very well for me. I guess it takes up too much time with the blanching, etc.

[caledonian]

It's a very tasty plant, but it requires very specific growing conditions: a long season, cool, very moist, with a great deal of sunlight. Its ancestors were swamp plants, and it hasn't been bred to cope with drier conditions the way its sibling celery has.

I just don't have the climate for it.

[ferdzy]

I am growing celeriac for the second year. (I have had this garden for 3 years now). The first year I grew it in the main garden, which is very dry and sandy. I watered it as much as I could but I know it would have liked more water. I did get an okay crop in the end; about half the plants bulked up enough to store.

This year we created some new vegetable beds in a lower spot in the garden, which is much more the underlying clay. It is also very moist. It's the bottom of a little valley, near a creek, and water seeps through it for a long time after a rain. The soil is poor and acidic though.

For a long time I thought the celeriac was doing very little. The leaves grew but it has only been in the last couple weeks that the roots have fattened up. They are still not what you would call large. I'm hoping they will do still better before I have to pull them.

If you can grow celeriac it's well worth it. It's usually $2 for a good-sized root at the farmers market, which is a perfectly fair price, but I have paid over $8 for one at the grocery store! Which is crazy. (I got caught out because they sell them by the pound.)

They store really, really well. The best root vegetable for storage that I have tried so far.

[12540dumont]

Joseph, I started some in flats this year in August, and I'm going to try to set them out this week. I'm putting them in the garden that we call creekside. I'm going to plant them among the rhubarb. Last year, I planted and ignored them, watering once a week when I watered the rhubarb and cabbage and they did fine.

Store? are you kidding? My CSA wolfed them down and asked for more.
I'm going to start another batch in January with the tomatoes.

[canadamike]

Growing celeriac in Utah looks like an oxymoron...but then you have proved you can do stuff.

If I remember well reading your past posts, your soil has clay. It is a blessing.

I was growing celery in clay ( both regular celery and celeriac, which is easier) in hard pan potery clay...to no success until I decided to play a game: celery and its easier brother celeriac, another celery really,are swamp plants.

Swamps are acid ecosystems...and very wet of course...so I saw no problems in creating pools for them in my potery clay...

I took a pickaxe and made holes in my clay, then filled them with peat moss and sand. Voila, mini marshes...it rains a lot here, we are in a wet climate, so the holes were almost always watery, perfect for the lil bastards.

In Utah, you will have to come up with a constant watering solution, they really need water, albeit less than their brothers. Less water for celeriac means a smaller root that is edible, less water for its brother means stringy stalks...only good for cooking ( but better at that than the crisp ones might I had).

Drip irrigation might very well be a solution for you, otherwise, the 2 quarts soda water method could help ( a large plastic coke or else bottle planted in the soil then filled with water)

It needs more regulatity than a very large volume of water in my experience. Celery fed with water regularly will grow lush according to the amount of water, give it more and it will be huge, in 1992 I grew one plant that filled a half barrel...it was not ONE huge celery, but loads of of them...Like many many plants living side by side, smaller celery ''hearts'' as they are sold »( for more money, btw, around here) it was like mints...

This summer, we did some research on LITHOVIT, the new CO2 fertilizer that is used by all the record vegetable growers ( giant pumpkinetc...)

We sprayed celery with it, and then with extremely finely powdered lithothamne, an alguae that produce highly available calcium carbonate.

The lithothamne is one fifth the price and gave us HUGE celery. LIke many plants in one. Once we looked at it, we had 4 harvestable plants with lithothamne, 2 with LITHOVIT.

Celery is a clumping vegetable, and so is celeriac, albeit to a lesser extent. Give it what it wants and it will clump like mint or else. To stop that, you have to prune prune prune...or use whatever the techniques the chemical people use...and I don't know about them...

I am sure it is very healthy though

You are in Utah my friend, in Utah..reflect on your available water and what you can do, then if it is only for personnal use or commerce, I do not have to tell you it is easier to care for 12 plants than half an acre...maybe you should play with the seasons, it is a pretty cold tolerant plant...

And Joseph..I am drying maters and melon seeds for you as we speak...the radishes seeds will come with them.....and some corn, both in sweet and flour incarnations...

[12540dumont]

Oh Canada,
You have just explained the phenomena surrounding the celeriac that was near the hose bib...it was 3 celeriac. I was accused of a miss-plant.

[throwback]

We get a good crop without much water, but I start them in 200 cell flats in early March and transplant to 48 cell flats when there are two true leaves. I grow them on until late May and tranplant to rows in the garden where I water them in well. I water them about once during the growing season when we get our annual 100F degree heat spell otherwise that's it. The roots are acceptable size at harvest, and we are able to keep them in the ground with a soil cover around the roots and row cover to protect the tops. The more celeriac we eat the more we want and we're finding that we are using the tops as much as the root. A great dual purpose staple in our garden. Actually triple purpose if you save the seeds for seasoning too. I don't grow celery anymore...

Much less fussy than celery in my garden.