Design Your Garden Online!

eBook

Questions & Answers

Free & Fun Stuff

Gift Shop

Planning a Garden

Planting a Garden

By Vegetable...

By Fruit

Canning Foods

Freezing Foods

Recipes

All About Tomatoes

Container Gardening

New Pages

Contact, Privacy, Sitemap

Subscribe To This Site

Growing Celery, Planting Celery, How to Grow Celery

growing celery

The best tips for growing celery when home vegetable gardening. Learn how to plant, grow, and care for celery, and which varieties of celery to try in your backyard vegetable garden.

Design Your Own Vegetable Garden Layout Using our Free "Vegetable Garden Planner" Software!

In February, it is time to sow seeds for celery for most gardeners.

In March by transplanting time, the seedlings will have grown to be about 1 ½ inches tall.

At this stage, transfer the tiny plants to six-packs.

Download Free Garden Planning Worksheets, Garden Diary, Zone Chart, Or Planting Guide

How to Grow Celery

Celery produces flowers rather than edible stalks if it is subjected to cold temperatures early in its life.

Leave the seedlings in a cozy greenhouse or hotbed until the night temperatures can be counted on to remain above 55 degrees.

Depending on your climate zone, it may be late May or early June before growing celery can take place safely outdoors.

Planting Celery

In early June, at long last the celery seedlings sown in February are ready for the vegetable garden bed.

The challenge is waiting until all threats of night temperatures dropping below 55 degrees have passed!

If the plants are set in while the nights are still chilly, the celery will go to seed instead of producing succulent stalks.

Celery requires moisture, organic matter, and fertilizer.

Plants grown without this helpful trio are liable to be tough and stringy.

If there is already peat moss and lime dug in the garden soil for other vegetable plantings, the only additive needed is 10-10-10 fertilizer of about 1 ½ pounds to 100 square feet.

Afterward, set the plants in at 8 to 10 inch spaces and water them to get them off to a fast start. (You have waited long enough!)

Celery Pests & Diseases

Throughout the growing season use insecticide to repel aphids and fungicide to protect the plants from leaf blight.

Side-dress the rows of growing celery with 5-10-5, once in mid-July and again in mid-August.

Tips for Growing Celery

Because moisture is the key to celery that is tender, commercial growers plant their crops in what is called muck soil.

It is wet, highly organic and usually derived from an area that was once a peat bog.

If your soil is light and dries out quickly, these conditions produce celery that looks great but is too stringy to eat.

Keep your crop well fed and watered through the growing season.

Like the commercial growers, it is a good idea to blanch the celery to tenderize the stalks.

Blanching Celery

When blanching celery, light is excluded so that chlorophyll is driven out of the cells, which leaves the stalks pale and tender.

There are a number of ways to blanch a crop of growing celery.

One method is to stake two boards up against the sides of the plants in a 4 foot section of row.

Leave only the top leaves exposed to the light.

Blanching in manageable 4 foot sections produces a series of small harvests.

The celery is completely blanched after about 4 weeks.

Through germination and early growth, celery plants are highly sensitive to cold weather.

When the plants are matured, they can tolerate a frost.

In fact, the stalks are crispier in cool weather.

Continue blanching the rows, 4 feet at a time, until snowfall.

growing celery

Best Varieties of Celery Plants to Grow at Home

Fordhook is a standard variety with good growth habits.

Another noteworthy type is Golden Self-Blanching.

If block planted, this kind will self-blanch.

It produces crisp, deeply ribbed, tasty celery without the bitter flavor or strings of some celery.

The plants reach heights up to 23 inches provided with ample water.

This growing celery variety is also disease resistant.

Growing Celery to Vegetable Gardening

You Might Also like to Read:

Growing Celery to Planting a Vegetable Garden

"Get the Dirt!" on Vegetable Gardening!

> > A FREE Vegetable Gardening Tips and Ideas Newsletter < <

"Where to begin with my own vegetable garden? I need some help!"

Should I just try planting some seeds in the ground? Is there more to vegetable gardening than meets the eye? How about a container garden?

Get the answers, tips, ideas, and more by subscribing to our FREE "Get the Dirt" newsletter.

Easy & Inexpensive
Vegetable Gardening Help, Tips, and Ideas:
Where to Start When Planning a Vegetable Garden?
"Conquer 27 Gardening Challenges that Steal Your Time, Sanity, & Money!"

Gardening Mistakes are
Frustrating and Unnecessary...

27 Gardening Challenges & Their Solutions, Explained in Detail.

Gardening Worksheets
Garden Planting Guide
Sample Garden Plans
Garden Diary

Only $9.97
Instant Download

Learn More Here

footer for growing celery page