I don't think this is going to work - Celery

Sweet Tatorman's picture

I have never grown celery but was inspired to at least look into it by a posting by forum member Lathechuck. I found several mentions during an online search of the possibility of rooting and planting the butt end of a celery bunch. I gave it a try as seen in the photo below. Things started out well with visible growth of the top within a day. Unfortunately even after a week's time there was no root development. I removed it from the container shown and treated the bottom with the rooting hormone Indole-3-butyric acid and set the celery butt on a damp paper towel for several days then returned it to the pictured container. Four days further on there is still no significant degree of root development. I will give it a few more days but have little expectation of satisfactory result.

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Actually, my mother does this all the time (or she did).
She grows the celery ends on the window sill exclusively for the new green growth.
She snips them off and puts them in the soup.

She does NOT try to grow a new celery plant.
Once the celery end has grown a few sets of lives, it dies and it's off to the compost bin.

You haven't failed. You've got fresh soup greens.

ClareBroommaker's picture

What you did get looks nice and healthy. Try again! Have you sometimes seen your celery grow roots even when you weren't attempting that? I have, but I don't think I could tell you what conditions caused it. Uh, other than probably sitting in the refrigerator a long time.

I tried growing celery from seed, once but did not like the results-- scrawny, short, and bitter. This year I am going to find if I like lovage for the same purposes....We shall see...

Sweet Tatorman's picture

I do not actually use much celery. Typically I buy 3 or 4 bunches around the first week of July to make large batches of borscht for freezing and not at all the rest of the year. The bunch providing the butt end pictured was the exception which I purchased to try as a component of leek/sweetpotato soup which I have been experimenting with this year. I have never had any that hung around in the fridge for any length of time. BTW, treatment with the rooting hormone did not produce any effect.

Sweet Tatorman's picture

About a month ago I got tired of looking at this celery butt on the sill of my bathroom window so I planted it in an out of the way corner of the garden. At that point is still did not have any roots to speak of. Surprisingly it not only is not dead yet but appears to have increased in size a bit.

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Sweet Tatorman's picture

The photo below was taken this morning which is one month on from the last photo posted. This is actually clearly growing now which as per my OP I did not expect. Height is about one foot and largest stalk diameters are about that of a pencil. Flavor is strong and bitter but this is OK as I can work with bitter flavor for some uses. No sign of flowering but I will keep a close watch for it.

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lathechuck's picture

The celery plants that I planted in the garden last summer, and partially harvested before the frost, are now vigorously going to seed. Through the Spring, I cut an occasional stalk to use in tuna salad, and a bunch of tops for another batch of celery pesto. When the flower stalks appeared, I let one go wild, and cut off every flower stalk I saw on the other plant. Celery is biennial; if I let it go to seed, I'm pretty sure it will simply die. But if I prevent it from flowering this year, I hope that it may resume vegetative growth, and I'll get more fat leaf stalks for salad next Spring (before it flowers again). I'll save the seeds, both for sowing and for seasoning.

Since celery is biennial, though, the stump of a bunch of grocery-store celery may be ready to flower, if it has a chance to grow that much. If so, it seems unlikely that you'll get the kind of vegetative growth that you want.

I've never noticed before how much celery and flat-leaf parsley resemble each other, especially since my celery doesn't have the tight bundle of leaf stalks found in the grocery store. I hope they aren't hybridizing!

IIRC Correctly, celery used to be a fancy, expensive vegetable on Victorian tables. They devised celery vases to serve it more genteelly.

Maybe because it was hard to grow and blanch? Veg and fruit that are hard to grow and expensive are trendy and special.

lathechuck's picture

My celery plants, transplanted into my garden last fall, now appear brown and dead. That is, the ones that I "castrated" by cutting off flower stalks whenever they appeared, are dead. It may be that the cut stems were avenues for disease invasion. The ones left to their natural life cycle are bushy with clusters of seeds.

A few years ago we let a celery plant from the previous spring go to seed just to see what would happen. Oh, boy, did we get seeds. We also got many volunteer plants the following spring. You many not have to worry about starting celery again and just move the volunteers where you want them. Of course you will need to let them go to seed now and again.