Celery 'Gigante Dorato'

Franchi - Celery 'Gigante Dorato'

The Golden Giant: Celery Gigante Dorato

Say goodbye to the back-breaking work of digging trenches with Celery Gigante Dorato. This superb Italian heirloom (whose name translates to "Golden Giant") is a favorite among home gardeners because it offers gourmet flavour with significantly less effort than traditional British "trench" varieties. While traditional celery requires "earthing up" to turn white, the Gigante Dorato is a self-blanching variety. It naturally grows with a beautiful, yellowish-golden hue, making it one of the most attractive and user-friendly crops for the vegetable patch.

• No Trench Required: As a self-blanching type, it grows upright on top of the soil. You don't need to bury it in deep trenches to make it edible.

• Superb Texture: This variety is famous for being succulent and crisp. It is much less fibrous and "stringy" than dark green commercial varieties.

• Milder Flavour: The golden stalks have a delicate, sweet aromatic flavour that lacks the harsh bitterness often found in supermarket celery.

• Compact Footprint: Because you don't need wide earth mounds between rows, you can plant these closer together, making them perfect for raised beds or smaller allotment plots.

Master Gardener's Tip: The "Bog" Plant

Celery descends from wild marsh plants, and it never forgets its roots! The secret to crisp, sweet stalks rather than hollow, stringy ones is consistent moisture. If the plant dries out, even for a day, it goes into survival mode and becomes bitter. To grow the perfect 'Gigante Dorato', enrich your soil with plenty of compost to hold water, and mulch heavily around the base. If you can, plant it in a block (grid pattern) rather than a single long row; the plants will shade each other, which helps retain soil moisture and encourages better self-blanching in the centre of the block.

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