How to Grow Celery
How to Grow Celery:
**You can grow celery in any climate if you time it right. Some varieties take a long time to grow (up to 4 months), so read your specific seed package closely for that information.
**All celery plants dislike hot summers. Sow it in the fall in hot areas or in early spring in cold climates.
Position:
**Celery prefers a mucky soil or a high water table. The natural environment of celery is marshes. However, you can still grow it in average soil with treatments.
**It is a heavy feeder that needs a very rich soil. It would help if you put in lots and lots of well-rotted manure, compost, and/or peat moss into the soil before planting. The best pH is 6.0-7.5 (if you do not have a soil testing kit yet, this one is an option).
**You should also make sure that the soil has enough calcium in it to avoid the disease ‘black heart’. Adding lime (like this)to boost the pH will also take care of the plant’s calcium needs.
**It will tolerate partial shade, so you have many options for where to grow this plant. For ideas on where to plant this crop, check out my Crop Rotation Guide for some suggestions.
**You do not need a lot of space for a celery crop. An 8-foot row will give you about ten bunches of celery.
Propagation:
**It is easier to buy plantlings than grow celery from seed (but here if you want to grow from seed, here is an option). The seeds are tiny and take two weeks to germinate while needing plenty of light, warmth, and moisture.
**If you do try from seed, for a spring crop, start the seeds indoors about 10 weeks before the last frost date. Sow the seeds in a light potting medium and just press the seeds lightly into the surface. Keep them perfectly moist and around 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit. Transplant outdoors around the time of the last average frost, but only if the weather and soil have started to warm up. Do not set outside in the cold to harden off before this.
**The plants should be about 5-6 inches tall when transplanted and spaced about 10 inches apart. Set the crowns a bit below the soil level and even if the soil is already fertile, give each seedling a cupful of liquid fertilizer at the planting time (such as fish emulsion). Give the new plants a dose of liquid fertilizer every few weeks to keep them growing vigorously. Mulching will help protect them from chilling and help maintain moisture.
**If you try from seed for a later crop, start the seeds indoors in May or June and follow the above instructions.
Maintenance:
**Water them well, especially in a drought. Add mulch to help contain moisture.
**Keep the bed weeded because celery will not tolerate competition.
**Good seeds, good soil, and steady watering will keep away most diseases.
Harvesting:
**Pick outside stalks as you need them, or harvest the whole plant, cutting it off at the base when it looks like a proper, mature bunch of celery.
**You can often prolong your harvest past the first frosts in fall by mulching heavily with straw.
**Celery can be stored for several weeks, sometimes even several months, in a cool cellar.
Hello, I just wanted to ask… did any of these work for you? I also have daily headaches and I’m tired of relying on taking Advil and Tylenol all the time for tension headaches. Thanks for the information!
Yes! These teas work wonders for me. I used to take tylenol/advil for my headaches, and I got to the point where I would take 4 pills for each headache with little to no change in the pain. I read somewhere that after a while, our bodies get addicted to the painkillers and if we stop taking them, they actually GIVE us more headaches! I don’t know if that’s true, but I stopped taking pills for my headaches, and after a few weeks, I stopped getting as many headaches as I did before. I grow my own lavender, chamomile, feverfew, valerian, and lemon balm. I buy skullcap and passionflower from mountainroseherbs.com. Valerian is a wonderful pain reliever and helps relax the body, it is often used for insomnia (as is passionflower) so I use these two in my headache teas before sleeping/napping. All of these herbs will be perfect for tension headaches, since lavender, chamomile, and lemon balm are good for promoting relaxation. I made a tincture from my feverfew and it is my best miracle worker herb. I get bad migraines (it would probably work with bad normal headaches as well), and whenever I start getting one, I add a few spoonfuls of my feverfew tincture to my coffee (for the caffeine) or my tea (even if I also added feverfew leaves to the tea) and I almost always lose my migraine within an hour.
I strongly recommend trying them out! Some of these herbs might work better for you than others, so you might need to experiment. However, they are all a joy to grow and dry and I LOVE drinking the teas made from them. I hope you try them and they are as successful for you as they were for me! 🙂 Thanks for visiting!
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What kind of lavender do you grow from seed? What is the latin name? I see there are different types of seeds I could buy.
Thank you for the great information!
Thanks for the great information! I have suffered with migraine headaches all my life. I have found over the years that diet also has a lot to do with prevention. I do not take anything but herbal remedies and take and grow most of the herbs you suggest here. Thanks for the tea receipts and information on how they work, I have my own receipts but love to try other various reciepts. Very helpful.
Sarah
My mother suffers from migraines and I have always wanted to try to help her ease her pain of week long migraines . Even though she takes medicine to help ease her pain she runs out quickly. Causing her to lay on the couch for about a week. I thank you for sharing your tea recipes. I hope one of these recipes can help my mother.