All About Growing Celery
By growing celery, you can cut back on or eliminate chemical residues found on nonorganic celery sold at the supermarket.
By Barbara Pleasant
December 2011/January 2012
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Learn how to grow your own stalk celery, cutting celery and celeriac for a crunchy, flavorful addition to your organic garden.
ILLUSTRATION: KEITH WARD
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For centuries, aromatic celery has flavored soups and added crunch to salads. But today’s commercial, non-organic celery continuously ranks near the top of the list of vegetables known to carry chemical residues, with some samples tainted with more than 60 pesticides.
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That’s a great reason to buy organic or start growing celery yourself, cutting celery and celeriac — three different forms of celery’s parent species, Apium graveolens. Native to Greece, celery is easy to grow if given a long head start indoors and rich, moist soil.
Celery Types to Try
Stalk celery is the supermarket version most people recognize. Commercial stalk celery is grown by following an intricate regimen of fertilizers and flood irrigation. Even under perfect growing conditions, stalk celery stays in good picking condition for only a few days. If you're growing celery in moist garden soil, stalk celery can be handled as a cut-and-come-again crop — just harvest a few outer stalks at a time.
Cutting celery is like a primitive form of stalk celery. The bushy plants produce numerous small stalks with strong flavor. Established plants are hardy to Zone 5 or 6. Cutting celery that survives winter will bolt in spring and produce heavy crops of edible seeds, and it will reseed itself with slight encouragement.
Celeriac slowly develops a rounded, knobby root that has a crisp texture and mild, nutty flavor. While in the ground, you’ll see thin, celery-like stalks growing from the rounded top of the edible root. Celeriac harvested in fall will store for weeks in a cold root cellar or refrigerator.
For more information about types of celery and our recommended varieties, see our Celeries at a Glance chart.
When to Plant Celery
Celery seeds of all types are small and may germinate erratically. Start them in doors or in a greenhouse 10 to 12 weeks before your last spring frost and give them bright light. Seedlings that have more than five leaves can be hardened off and set out when average night temperatures are above 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Exposure to cold for more than a week can trigger plants to bolt and produce seeds. In hot summer areas with mild winters, start seeds indoors in late summer and set them out in early fall. Plants should be ready to harvest about 90 days after you put your seedlings in the ground.
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