Growing celery in your garden can be quite tricky. Although it’s one of the easiest plant to grow, you’ll have some difficulties if you don’t know the tricks. You can grow celery on any soil as long as it has adequate amounts of fertilizers.

Soil Preparation

Celery is best grown in a neutral pH level. As mentioned above, it should be planted in rich soil. Make sure that your soil is also capable of retaining moisture. Basically, celery likes a cool and moist environment. So providing these is important to the success of your garden.

Prepare your soil weeks before your scheduled planting of your celery. Make sure that you’ve added fertilizer to your soil. Adding fertilizer such as animal manure or compost to your soil will add nutrients to your growing medium.

Planting Celery

Celery is quite difficult to transplant. If planted during the cool time of the day though, you can have a better chance of successfully transplanting your celery. For best results, start your seeds indoors. Although you can always sow outside on your garden, sowing indoors is the best practice. Start at least 8 to 10 weeks before the average last date of frost in your area. It’s important that you keep track of the last frost date for perfect timing purposes.

At this time, your soil is ready for transplanting. Wait until your seedlings are strong enough before you transfer them outdoors. It would be smart if you slowly introduce them outside by bringing the seedling box outdoors.

Transplant

Dig holes at least 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep. Their distance from each other should be around 12 inches. Transplant your celery seedlings early in the morning or late in the afternoon to avoid the warm temperature. Water and mulch the seedlings as soon as they’ve been transferred to the permanent growing bed.

Care

Remove the weeds you see on your grow beds. Make sure that there are no competitors for the nutrients. Celery are heavy feeders. This is why you need to get rid of the competition. Feed your celery with fertilizer on a regular basis. Add fertilizers such as animal manure or compost regularly to make sure there’s enough nutrients. Water your celery regularly to keep them from drying out. In case you don’t water them regularly, the stalks won’t grow big. Water them thoroughly especially during the dry season to prevent them from drying out. Adding mulch to the ground is also a good idea in keeping moisture.

Get rid of any pests you see on your garden. The common pests that will attack your celery garden are aphids, whiteflies, and cutworms. You can use conventional fertilizers to eliminate them. You can also use organic ways to get rid of the pests.