SUPER EASY CELERY FOR THE HOME GARDENER

So. To sum up, my 82 year old father-in-law is SUPERFLY.

How in the hell am I going to follow that?
With a post on celery, bitch.
Oh yeah? Oh HAIL yeah.

You see what I do here?

"Why no. Just what is it that you do here?"

JUST EXACTLY WHATEVER the living, breathing motherfuck I want to do, is what I do here, dogaroonie.

If I want to do a post on the lint I find in my dryer I'll just do that humbear. If I want to do a whole cockalockin' post on soil bacteria I'll just DO that rasty bastard. Picture of my dog's butt? HA! DONE ALREADY DONE THAT ONE, BABY! SUCK ON IT!!!!!

I could sit here and just type the letter 'A' a whole bunch of times if I wanted to.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAa
]
Oh yeah.
And I'll leave that bracket too. FUCK yes, D.B. Cooper. Hijack THAT plane ya little bitch.

*takes medication*

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Your soil must be rich, neutral and on the damp side...a clay loam is perfect.

1. In the fall, buy a regular head of celery from the supermarket.

2. Use the whole head except for the very center where the stunted, yellow-white leaves are.

3. Leave as much of a root stub on this 'heart' as possible. Using a very sharp knife, shave a fine, fine slice off the bottom of this stub, leaving the end clean and white.

4. Wash the whole thing carefully under cold water, and trim off wilted or damaged parts.

5. Place the cleaned start in a glass of clean, cold water on a north-facing windowsill so that the root stub is well immersed. Don't let it contact the bottom of the glass.

6. Change the water frequently, and keep the glass clean. You might notice cloudy goop forming around the root stub; simply wipe it off gently under the faucet in cold water.

7. In a few WEEKS you will notice small white rootlets beginning to form in a circle around the base of the stems. The stems might also have grown an inch or so. This might take all winter long, so don't panic if you don't see any action for a long time. As long as the leaves and stems are still healthy looking, you're good.

8. In spring when the last frost has passed, plant the rooted celery in a raised mound of really rich, well-cultivated soil (the same way you plant zuchinni and pumpkins,) and keep it moist. NOT SWAMPY. It needs to drain. Later in the summer you can make a moat around the crown to help the water soak in instead of running off the surface. The more water the celery receives the fatter the stalks will get and the taller the plant. However, this increases the chance that the plant will suddenly decide to send up a flowerstalk and die (bolt.) Just give it a nice shower in the evening (unless it's rained the day before) and call it good.

9. Otherwise, ignore.

10. Clip stalks off the side of the clump all spring, summer and early fall whenever you need some, leaving the central bunch in the ground.
Homegrown celery tends to run smaller and darker green than store-celery. It also tastes far more aromatic than store celery, so you need less.

11. Come fall, after the first light frost, pull up the whole plant and cut off the root ball to within an inch of where the stems begin. There will be 'offsets'; mini-plants that grown off at an angle out from the central root and the main crown. Just crack these away from the main root. Select the smaller, healthiest offsets, the ones with the most root, and repeat the process at one.
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But no, 'Nations! That's CHEATING! That's not REAL GARDENING! Real gardeners grow things from seed! If you don't grow it from seed you're NOT A REAL GARDENER! You're BREAKING THE RULES! You're doing it the EASY way! Furthermore, you're not maintaining GENETIC DIVERSITY! You're only creating CLONES! And, and, a big DISEASE could come along and wipe out your whole crop! And then move on and wipe out everyone elses' crop that's growing the same variety! And then get stronger and stronger and mutate and breed! And fall into a nuclear reactor and then maybe a guy sweeping the floor will sweep it back outside where it will grow and spread at a geometric rate and KILL ALL THE WHOLE CELERY IN THE WORLD! AND MARS AND VENUS PLUS ALL THE ASTEROIDS! AND SATURN!

Get a fucking grip people. You stick shit in the ground and it grows; that's gardening.

Seed is selected from cloned varieties. How do you think they maintain commercial variety? By asking the celery nicely? By magic? Does 'lil Harry Potter wave his winkie over the celery and say "Celery est!" or some jive ass trumped-up Latin crapola and WHOOMP there is more celery?

NO! They select healthy plants with desirable traits and....wait for it.....take clones! And let them bolt! And take seeds from the cloned plants and....
wait, wait.......
-Sell them!

Theres a problem, though. Celery seed is NOTORIOUSLY BUTTLICKING DIFFICULT to grow on from seed! It takes 6 and one half Federation Standard light-years to germinate, and Mr. Spock has to urinate on it all that whole time. Oh yes! Plus it has to have a constant high soil temp and must lie on the top of the dirt undisturbed in the light where CELERY PREDATORS can just come along and KILL IT AND EAT ITS BRAIN AND RIP OUT IT'S PANCREAS AND LEAVE THE REST TO ROT IN THE TORRID, UNFORGIVING HEAT OF A MERCILESS SUN!

In addition, seedling celery damps off for no reason. The shit just dies. Or cutworms chew it off at the soil, or celery flies and carrot flies come along and land all over it and lick it all over or do whatever they do and kill it in the prime of its young and promising celery life, thus depriving you of vital celery nutrients! AND NOBODY WANTS THAT!

So yeah. Root a clone in water and then plant it out.


*takes more medication*