Good morning Charles (and everone else).
I’ve followed your guidance with sowing and planting of celeriac “prinz” for the last two years; you method has allowed the establishment of healthy plants that bulk-up nicely in the autumn.
Unfortunately, many of the roots were damaged (very substantially) by woodlice. In 2014 I grew in raised beds with wooden sides, in 2015 I grew in beds without sides; but the damage was much the same.
Have you suffered this damage and is there anything I can do?
Best wishes,
Hi Tom. I know how frustrating this is. I lost my whole celeriac crop this year to slugs – my fault, I planted them in the wrong place and didn’t check them regularly enough until it was too late. The slugs got to them overnight and carved massive holes in the young roots. My point being, that during the daytime woodlice take up residence in the holes making it look as though they are doing the damage.
Yes DemelzaCat that is definitely one problem, slugs, but with a “normal” population of slugs the roots will be ok.
Tom, your problem with woodlice is almost worse because of the tunnels they make. I had it in 2012 but only in roots grown in beds with old wooden sides, which were rotting and must have been home to thousands of woodlice. In the next bed with no wooden sides, almost no damage!!
So you need to have no decomposing wood near the roots and this includes wood chips and shavings, even perhaps green waste compost in large amounts. I wonder if its woody compost you are using? Paths?
Last year I used 1in green waste and 1in compost from cow manure and had clean roots, only v few woodlice.
