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Oh Celery

November 13th, 2017

I’ve been growing celery for years as it’s a main ingredient in my home canned tomato soup. Each year it gets better and better and this year was the best year yet. Most often, my celery is OK for cooking, not so great to eat raw. Celery can be a picky crop, it’s greedy to be sure. Lots of water and lots of food is what makes it thrive. If it’s not provided with the perfect conditions, it’s hollow, tough, and only fit for stock. This variety is ‘Tango’ which was sourced from Johnny’s Seeds.

I’ve been harvesting stalks from my plants for a few months now, we like them sliced on top of salads. When the weather decided to dip down below freezing every night, I decided it was time to harvest all these lovely plants (10 in total).  They will be paired with a few roosters from the coop to make a wonderfully rich chicken stock for the freezer. It’s quite exciting to finally master growing something and to find your homegrown product is leaps and bounds over what you can buy.

What crop have you struggled to grow in the past?

4 Comments to “Oh Celery”
  1. Nebraska Dave on November 13, 2017 at 9:50 am

    Susy, I’ve talked before about my journey to be able to harvest sweet corn. It’s not been the fact that I couldn’t grow it but it’s been the challenge to keep the wild critters away from it. There are many challenges to gardening and some are not getting things to grow. Thank goodness I don’t have a bug or disease problem.

    Have a great celery tomato soup day.

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  2. Joan on November 13, 2017 at 11:27 am

    I’ve tried to grow celery, with no luck. I am sure the problem is that I don’t give it enough water. I like to grow plants that can get by with only minimal supplemental watering, so celery doesn’t make the cut!

    I’m still harvesting kale and arugula – I love these late season plants that I can continue to harvest after a frost!

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    • Susy on November 14, 2017 at 10:19 am

      I actually didn’t water mine much this year, but I did give it a super thick layer of mulch when I planted it. I think that may have been the key for me. I’ve also read that some people plant it in a trough, so that when it does rain the water collects and then you can easily give the celery a can of water occasionally without wasting as much water.

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  3. Chris on November 13, 2017 at 9:20 pm

    Same here as far as the greedy crops! If they require an overabundance of water, fertilizer etc. they get cut! I think it makes better sense to grow and eat crops more suited to their native climates. Kind of like trying to grow roses in the desert or cactus in a rainforest. Doesn’t make sense. To me, it’s along the lines of growing and eating seasonally. Soo, like dry land gardening only not as intense, is the way we garden here! If it doesn’t thrive without being a water guzzler, we find it’s more drought resistant cousin! :)

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About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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