Fennel - How many should I sow?

I've never grown fennel before, and never used it in cooking, but I do like the flavour from when I've had meals with it in when I've been on my hols abroad.

But, I got a free pack of seeds for it, along with 9 other packs for other herbs, so I decided to give it a go.

The packet says its a hardy perennial and that you use pretty much the whole plant.

I've sowed a 48 cell insert with them and stuck them in my grow cupboard. Should I grow more, or focus on something else next? I guess what I'm asking is, how many fennel plants does one household need?

Also, being hardy perennial, say if I want to use the stems like celery as it says on the packet, would the plant come back? Is it like 'cut and come again' or is it more like cut down and wait til next year for more?

 

I think that will be ample Clueless...the stems won't come back while the next year if you cut them back but they do self seed everywhere so you'll never be short on plants....

 

NO MORE !!!!!!

 

I would have suggested sowing half of them this year and half next year, then start saving/sowing seeds each year to start replacing the oldest plants as new plants from seeds will produce a later supply of leaves just when last year's plants start going to seed and have nothing useable on them.

 

I have a couple fennel growing to be dried like dill, which we do really like dried. Is it good dried, one place thought it was very mild. (But 48! I planted 3)

 

I've sown a 24x cell tray and will probably sow another as I will pick many young plants to total destruction later in the year when we use fennel with mackerel.

 

My mouth is watering now.

 

Do you mean the leafy herb fennel rather than the bulbous fennel? If so, you'll be awash with it. My impression is that both dislike transplanting so for the lushest growth sow direct - you'll probably get a result even so.

 

I presume its the one grown for its leaves and seeds, although the packet says to use the stems like celery too.

The packet also said to sow direct, but I've given up on sowing direct (except for things like spuds and onions), because I have a tendency to accidentally hoe them out again when weeding, having forgotten that I sowed anything there.

 

Sowing in rows helps to avoid that. Sometimes broadcast sowing makes better use pof space, though.

 

I have two fennel: the normal one and a "bronze" one. It was only when I was growing it that I realised I didn't need to have bought seed ... it grows on roadside verges around here! (not the bronze though )

It isn't a cut and come again type as such, it grows for the season, dies back, comes back sturdier and thicker the following year. Can get quite tall and is a lovely "airy" foliage and has yellow flowers.

Here is one of the seed heads forming (and the spider who loved the look so, so much, he styled his web on the fennel flower/seed look - soooo 2013, dearie! )

I could have sent you seed if you had asked!

 

That's very kind, but to be honest I doubt if I'd have ever got round to making a conscious decision to grow it, had it not been for the fact that it was one of 10 packets of seeds I got for nowt on the front of a magazine.

 

I'd say one healthy fennel is enough! My main fennel 'tree' gets to nearly 7 feet tall and 3 feet across. I cut it back to the base last year and it's coming back even stronger! The width of the stem at the base is currently 2" so looking like a beast already. Bugs love it too.

 

I usually have a couple in the kitchen garden and then one in the polytunnel. I love the stuff in all sorts of cooking and in salads. Yummy.

 

I once had one grow so big I could see it on an aerial photo of the village taken at 10,000 feet! But as I said before, once it goes to seed the leaves are unusable, and if you've got some new plants sown in spring coming on you will have a longer period to pick fresh tender leaves.

Gone to seed fennel is one of the plants that I will throw on a compost heap (that wont reach temps to kill the seeds), or deliberately spread the seeds around as I consider the seedlings as a 'crop' rather than weeds and might let them grow on a bit before removing them.