Celery, is it easy to grow?

[Intriguedbybonsai]

I love celery, but I've heard it can be difficult to find in most seed catalogs. I've never seen it as seedlings in garden centers. Does it come in different varieties? How difficult is it to grow from seed?

[PunkRotten]

Yes there are different varieties. I tried growing it before and got a few small seedlings but they died. They are kind of delicate and I was not pampering them enough. Some of the experienced gardeners here have had trouble growing it too. So it can be tricky to grow. I know RainbowGardener has/had success growing it. It shouldn't be hard to find seeds I have seen them at places like lowes before.

[PunkRotten]

PS: you can cut off the end of store bought celery and put that in a a dish with a little water and it will resprout. You can then put it in soil and it will grow further. However, the stalks will be small.

[applestar]

I started Tango and Ventura varieties from seeds for the first time this year. I also have overwintered plants of what turned out to be Chinese Celery that I bought starts for at the grower's co-op last year (I asked for celery and they found me the "last" 6-pack hiding among the parsley).

They took a little while to sprout -- about same wait as carrots I think. I started them early (10-12 wks before last frost was the instruction -- I'll look up exact dates in my notes if you want.... started on 2/16, ALL the Tango sprouted together on 2/24, Venture started sprouting on 2/23 and took about a week for them to all show up with a few no show.) and kept them on the bottom shelf -- cooler and less light than peppers or tomato seedlings. But I read that the main problem ith growing celery from seeds is that if the seedlings experience temps less than 55°F they have tendency to bolt the first year, so I kept them indoors with the peppers in the eary spring and put them outside on same temp conditions.

I started them in 3/4" micro soilblocks. They grew very well upblocked to 2" soil blocks. Others uppotted and growing in re-purposed K-cups (6 holes) did well also. I fed them diluted, aerated higher N organic fertilizer tea.

Peppers were hardened to direct sun, but I kept the celery seedlings in the noonday shade area, and planted them where they get a lot of moisture and shaded by the tomatoes.


Two of the Chinese Celery bolted last year and I let them go to seed and collected a bagful of celery seeds. This year, the bed is COVERED with volunteers and I'm hoeing them out like weeds.... The overwintered plants are bolting now, so I'll have plenty of volunteers next year too.

I'm going to try the Redventure variety with red stalks next year.

...so yeah. I'd say it was pretty easy. Only real problem I had was that my house gets invaded by ants at spring thaw -- fact of life -- and they pastured aphids on my celery seedlings every day -- one or two on each. I was patiently picking aphids off with a bamboo skewer dipped in sudsy water and occasionally resorting to spraying with the soapy water, but mostly spraying down the marching ant trail.

[rainbowgardener]

It has a reputation for being hard to grow, but I don't know why. I hadn't grown any for years, but I tried it again last year, starting from seed, and it did great. One of the best things in my garden in full sun & part sun locations. So I have a bunch of it in my garden this year. I will say my garden celery seems to have more leaves and less stalk than the store bought, but it does have stalks. And nothing much has been bothering it, except the woodchuck ate some before I got it fenced well enough.

[tomc]

Celery is a water whore, and has small feet so it needs ample feeding. But its not that hard to grow.