March 2, 2009

Stalking the celery

Say you have thought about growing celery in your vegetable garden until you think of all that blanching. Without it tough, stringy celery couldn’t possibly be tender and worth the trouble.

But lets just say that you grow your celery the old way—not to harvest the stalks, but to snip the tender leaves for soups and sandwiches. Now does celery makes sense?

Celery is a biennial – meaning it lasts two years in the garden. To get a jump on its slow growth, plant it from nursery starts. Then harvest the leaves as needed, herb-like, leaving the stalks to grow as woody as they want. If you need stalks in a pinch, pick a few from the tender middle.

More edibles:

Keep picking your peas
Is your broccoli and cauliflower ready to roll?