Leeks weren’t the only vegetable I picked up on a whim at the garden center this spring. A 6-pack of celery also caught my eye. And at just $1.99 for the lot, why not try growing celery? In the cart it went. Long stalks couldn’t be that difficult, after all.

And, again, while updating my father via phone conversation of my growing garden, the mention of my first-ever celery elicited this:

“Oh, well, celery, now you’ll need to grow it between some boards and block out the sun and…”

Perhaps celery was a little more complicated than I thought.

Types of Celery

Visit the grocery’s produce section and you’ll see celery in two forms: long, tall, intact stalks with some Italian parsley-like leaves, and pre-cut and bagged stalks, sans leaves. Both are the lightest shade of green. Like leeks, the celery stalks aren’t naturally white or pale, but are made so by the stalks’ limited exposure to sunlight.

I’m not exactly sure how this is completed at the commercial level, but on my father’s level, he must have experimented with propping boards against the growing stems. I’m not sure of his success with this technique, but I opted to go for the unblanched, regular old green look. Besides, although 99 percent of this year’s garden has crops planted in straight rows, I planted the celery helter-skelterish near my herbs. Propping up boards would be an odd horizontal version of Jenga. So, in the ground it went, with me knowing nothing about it.

Growing Celery

Back on May 27 I planted my celery 6-pack, which turned out to be way more than six plants, thanks to the growers planting multiple seeds in each cell. My 15 or so celery plants didn’t take to planting so well. The outer set of stems became yellowish, their leaves a bit spotted. I gave them a couple doses of Daniel’s Plant Food, removed those leaves and stems, and the remainder have grown fairly well, though incredibly slowly, since then.

The old-school (circa 1954) New American Garden Book, my go-to reference for veggie gardening basics, says celery is a cool-season crop that takes about 10 weeks from seed to produce good plants. Another reference I found also says it can take up to five months. Celery requires lots of good and consistent moisture, so a good well-draining but moist soil, preferably with compost, is just the ticket. Plants should be about 6 inches apart.

Learn From My Celery Mistakes

Considering this information, I missed the mark on several things:

1. I didn’t time my planting as a cool-season crop

2. My soil could have had more compost added to it

3. My plants are way closer than 6 inches. I have provided consistent moisture, so that’s in my favor.

This to me also suggests placing boards against the rows to blanch the stems, and another reference says this cuts down on the celery’s bitterness. What do you know? My dad was right. But I’m sticking with the bitter version to the bitter end. And according to my crop timing calculations, that should be at the end of August.