How To Grow Celery From Seed - Uk - Harvesting

The earlier sowings of our celery are now ready to start harvesting so we're going to have a look at how to do that today and then also how to keep them fresh in the fridge for as long as possible and then we're also going to have a quick look at the later sowings that we made. So mine are about two and a half, three inches tall at the moment and I can either look at popping these into a bed or I could look at starting to feed these if I don't have space. So if you wanted to feed them when we'd anything that doesn't encourage flowering or if we just wanted to pop them into a bed then we can get on and do that. With the additional heat that is due, do remember that these need lots of water so you will want to make sure that you water them really well or hold off until after the majority of the heat has actually passed before you do plant them out just to make sure that they don't get any additional shock and that they've got the best chance otherwise they may actually run to seed. My plants are actually hiding in here amongst my tomatoes because they're gaining from the shade of the tomatoes and then they're also getting the irrigation which is going to keep them nice and fresh and doing it really well. Now I could at this point just cut them off at the base, they will regrow from the base, they'll remove the whole plant if you don't want that to happen but what we do is we just continue to harvest the outer stems so to do that you're just going to literally pull down and move them and that is as simple as it is. If you've got any that are really small around the edge then removing those will also encourage larger stems so this one's pretty small there and then you just want to remove a few stems from each of your plants rather than too many just to encourage it to continue having plenty of growth. So I've just grabbed a handful at the moment and it's obviously just the stems that we're looking at so we're going to remove the leaves and then we're just going to pop them into some water. So all I'm going to literally do at this point is just remove all of the leaves from the top and as well just the bottom and then when you're going to eat them you just pull down you'll get some strings and this will just stop it being quite so stringy in your mouth. You do want to do that when you eat them rather than at this stage and then just pop them into some water. Once you have got all your stems in a cup or a glass or even a vase it doesn't really matter you can pop this into the fridge do change that water every day or every other day and then obviously when you come to eat it we're just going to string them if need be. This variety isn't one that is overly stringy so you might not find that necessary but with other varieties then it really might be. I have also got a little bit of leaf miner here you can just see there's like a lighter area where there's a track marker as well. So this is leaf miner it's something that happens on a lot of leafy growth and it's a little bug that's been laid in between the layers and you can sometimes find it and actually squish the main part of the or you can just remove it from the leaf and pop it into a hot compost bin. There's actually a white grub I'll pop a picture up behind it so that is the culprit there. But other than not actually wanting to eat it they don't really do any damage to the rest of the celery it is just the leaves that they might do that bit of damage for so you would remove that if you were going to keep these for stock. If your compost doesn't get hot then you can either find the culprits and squish them or just remove that part of the leaves and pop it into the bin or burn it if you are worried about them. But there's something that I get every year and they're not really that big of a problem. So at the moment these plants are obviously quite young so I'm not going to be harvesting the entirety of the plants but as they do get older and later into the season then that's what I'll do and that's the point that I will be cutting them up and using the rest of them when they're a little bit more tough for stocks and stews and soups and things like that. So at this stage it is really just useful eating but you can of course if you've grown plenty of them then remove them now just chop them up and pop them into the freezer but we will look back again at a later date.