Like all good things in life, I will tell this to my son, you must wait to reap the harvest.

This is good advice, dad.  But geeze, 8 months?  is anything worth it.  I like the celery that I am eating now.  I seeded it in the greenhouse in mid-January (actually, Andrea did), planted it out in April.  You know, I wonder if I could have sped up its maturity with tons of water and fertilizer for those first few months, to have celery at the later part of June?  I know for sure that I didn’t give it the proper water until a couple of months ago.  When I started giving it the proper water treatment (read: the more water the better - I haven’t been able to harm it, even leaving the drip on 24/7) and a side-dressing of the blood meal and gypsum (calcium=muy importante because, without it, the celery heart turns black and rots - I have witnessed this firsthand, unfortunately/fortunately) it shot up.

I just gave a bunch of celery stalks to the CSA this week, and look forward to the reaction.  I think the taste is sweeter than store celery, which always tastes a little metallic to me.  But ours definately has a stronger celery flavor, which may turn some off to it.

I’ll probably always grow a little bit of celery, although it is a water hog (some publications say it is an extreme fertilizer NPK hog as well, although I think it needs more water than anything, with normal NPK dosage). I like to have it for the CSA.

Andrew