Martine Celery - Apium graveolens

The Celery 'Martine' is a herbaceous vegetable plant cultivated for its highly aromatic petioles and leaves. Its red stalks distinguish it. The foliage is compact and vigorous, with pale green leaves with golden reflections. It has wide, fleshy stalks (petioles) shaped like gutters. The sowing period extends from February to the end of May for a harvest of 6 to 7 months after sowing.

Celery is a descendant of a plant called Marsh Ache, native to the Mediterranean. This plant was not considered a vegetable but a medicinal plant until the Renaissance.

Celery leaves are used as a condiment in soups and stews and to flavour certain sauces and stuffings. The raw, tender, finely sliced stalks can be part of the ingredients in compound salads. Celery has many virtues: anti-rheumatic, delicious, digestive, and remineralising, and contains vitamins and copper, iron, and iodine.

Celery will require a significant supply of well-decomposed compost or manure (5 kg per m²) as well as potash in the form, for example, of wood ash.

Harvest: Celery is harvested by cutting the whole plant at ground level as needed. This celery is sensitive to frost.

Storage: Before the frosts, from the end of October, the plants are pulled up with their roots and placed in trenches or stored in a cellar in the sand.

The gardener's tip: Celery is particularly demanding in water and nutrients. Provide a good mulch to maintain moisture at the base of the plant and a good supply of organic matter.