celery update

The celery is growing well in its new outdoor home! It is not ready to be blanched yet, but it is definitely getting there. I'm happy to report that all of the celery plants survived the transplanting process - there were one or two of them I had concerns about. We did have some big storms that knocked some of the dirt from the hills into the trenches, but I do not believe that they is a big problem - just an inconvenience.


Ignore the grasses and weeds in these photos - I weeded those that were at the bottom, possibly competing with the celery root structure, but when I began pulling the grasses growing on the tops and sides of the trenches quite a bit of dirt fell in. I am trying to minimize that until the celery is ready to be blanched.


I will find out if the extra dirt is a problem when I harvest. I think it will just be a matter of breaking the stalks off and washing them well. My guess is that it would only be a problem if you were going to store the whole plant or sell it at a market. But I could be wrong - perhaps having the dirt in between the stalks will make the celery disease-prone or will make it rot. We'll see!