An experiment that failed!

Space is at a premium in my garden. Although quite large it was laid out before I got into growing for showing and so my veg plot is quite small. I've gradually grabbed bits of land from the more 'ornamental' parts but I still need to plan my growing year carefully so that I know which bits of land are growing which crops year by year. Crop rotation is a must on any plot but more so on mine where I grow so intensively.

I've never been able to devote a decent patch of land to growing celery. They like a nice deep fertile trench erring on the boggy side if anything. But they are fickle creatures and can get something called heart rot if conditions are not to their liking. I've grown them before this year in a bed made from old paving slabs on end lined with old growing bags to keep moisture in. This season however I wanted to use that bed for growing more carrots (a rushed attempt in the end that also failed) and I hit upon the idea of growing celery in large builders buckets filled with well-rotted compost and a few added fertilsers. It looked promising at the start......as you can see I had the buckets lined up in a small space next to my conservatory which is reasonably shady. They grew slowly because of the spring and a late sowing so were never going to be particularly large. But just when they seemed to be coming on they succumbed once again to celery heart rot. I use pellets so I know slugs weren't a problem.......it's thought by some that they might sometimes be responsible for introducing it.

One thing I didn't do this year is dribble a solution of calcium nitrate into the heart once a week......some think this prevents heart rot but I did that last season and still suffered from it.

So next year it's back to the drawing board. It's worth growing them when you get it right because they can look impressive on the showbench as you can see from an entry above in 2004 when I did get it right !