Winter sowing celery is one of the best ways I’ve found to produce large seedlings. In general, both celery and celeriac seedlings have the tendency to grow painfully slow. Even when started under grow lights indoors, it may take them quite few weeks to finally reach a size large enough for the home garden.
It wasn’t until I began to implement the winter sowing method into my garden that I was finally able to get results. Even so, celery has never really been my strong point. Though my stems are large to enough to harvest and use, they come no where near to that which you see at the grocery store. That statement actually seems to apply to many homegrown vegetables, so really that may not be the indicator of success.
Celery is technically a biennial plant. This means that it will grow green the first seed, overwinter, and then make seeds. I’ve never attempted to grow them in this manner, though it is definitely something I would like to do in the future. I’m not certain whether or not the plant would be hardy enough to survive my winter temperatures, but if so, I believe the this would result in the growth of larger plants.
Celery and celeriac are more of a “just for fun” crop here in my garden. In fact, I wasn’t even planning on growing it this year until I was gifted a couple seed packets. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this planting goes this spring!
