Well, we’re starting to knock down those cold climate crops! Our celery harvest is always a hands down favorite around here. And it’s a big one, too, we grow a lot of it!
We sing the praises of home grown celery pretty much every season. Many home grown crops are just a little bit tastier and better than store bought equivalents. But, celery dials that up to 11! For a lot of years, we didn’t grow celery and had no idea about this, but it’s one of those crops that are an absolute must-have these days!
It’s quite remarkable just how much better home grown is. Home grown celery has a robust bitter and sweet flavor that delights the pallette, and is just chalk full of that good celery flavor. We don’t know what commercial farmers do to make their versions so bland, but it might as well be a different vegetable to us. We grow enough celery each year so we don’t have to buy that stuff, ever!
Blanch and freeze is our preferred preservation technique here. It lends itself well to this preservation method as we’re often using it in soups, stews, stir-fries and other recipes where a handful or two of diced celery is what we need. It stores exceptionally well this way, often lasting us well into the next season.
Processing many heads of celery is kind of a pain, but it’s totally worth it. Sometimes we make the effort to use a food processor, sometimes we prepare it by hand with kitchen shears and a knife. Often, we’ll split up the duties of removing the leaves and dicing the celery for preservation, just to make the process go a little bit faster. We can hardly help ourselves from snacking as we go, it’s so tasty!
We usually grow at least a couple types of celery. Usually a green variant (usually Utah) and then a red/pink or other different color to mix things up. We just mix them all together in our processing, mostly as it gives a fun colorful addition for our meals. Pretty much every celery type we’ve tried has been phenomenol!
We’ll certainly harvest, as needed, throughout the late season. Freshly harvested celery only lasts about a week or two in the fridge, so that’s we generally prefer a whole crop harvest and preservation. You can try to wrap the celery in foil to extend that storage time, but you’ll still only get to about a month before it goes limp on you.
If you’re up for a bit of winter growing, celery is one of those crops you can easily re-grow for a fun winter project. Just place the root base in a bit of water and put the plant on a window sill. After the new sprouts start growing, transfer the plant to a pot and you can enjoy some rare, home grown spring celery!
Anyway, we’re super excited about our celery harvest this year! We’ll have a couple more things to discuss related to our celery harvests, too, as there’s more to celery than just the stalks! But, that’s going to have to wait until tomorrow!
