Raybo, Celery should be mounded up with loose dirt at least 6 inches on the stalks to blanch the stems. Celery is mildly poisonous and blanching helps reduce the level of toxins. The leaves make excellent flavoring for soups and stews. Celery is a cool season crop best grown either in late fall or early spring. It can handle short periods of sub freezing temps down to 22 degrees, but this seriously slows down growth. Do NOT grow celery in the heat of the summer, it will not be happy. Knowing your climate, you could probably grow it successfully from either December or January seed start. It is best started in cell trays with 2 or 3 seed per cell. The above tip about taking 12 weeks from seed to transplant is pretty close. I've managed to transplant at 8 weeks but the plants are small. My suggestion would be to fill an earthtainer 1/2 full of a very rich soil mix and set the plants to grow. When the plants are nearly full size, fill the earthtainer up with peat moss to induce blanching. DarJones

I was in your shoes a couple years ago and have learned A LOT in that time. The person who replied had some good info..... to add on to it... The cool season crops won't live in the heat of summer. You have to plant them early enough to get a crop before the heat takes out the plants. Most or all of these are frost-tolerant or frost-hardy. Other crops thrive in heat and sun during the summer, but die or are very damaged by any frost.... thus, why you have to plant after the last frost of spring. Some of these crops produce until the first frost of fall (although some stop before then.) The timing of when to plant is part of the art of gardening in your local area. For me, I plant peas, lettuce, carrots, beets and radishes quite early in spring. They start producing in a month or two (depends on the crop) and I can plant other seeds or plants after my last frost in the nearby area......... I know the lettuce can co-mingle with the baby tomato plant because the lettuce will be long gone before the tomato takes over. I know the radishes I can plug anywhere and they will produce within 25 days, give or take..... etc. etc. My summer crops that take up a lot of room (eg, squash, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes) but don't really get large until July or so, are normally planted in the same beds as the above-mentioned coop season crops. I haven't planted bush beans, but I will try to find photos of my pole beans....

Goto Nursery promotes the idea of planting tomatoes!!! in late summer. Steve Goto goes around to lots of nurseries -- even here in Northern Calif., zone 15-17 -- and promotes short-season tomatoes he sells along with selected soil additives. Since we usually have a frost in early Dec., I haven't planted a new crop that late, but since you'll be starting anew that might be something exciting to try. I've seen articles on the web with more info. Good winter crops here, in zones 15-17, are all the broccoli family (broccoli, kale, collards, radishes, mustard, kohlrabi, broccoli raab, etc.), greens (which prefer cooler weather or shade), carrots, beets, mache, onions, celery. Sometimes I plant peas in the fall (by Oct., here), but I need to keep them protected with row cover all winter or else the birds will eat them to bare stems (they did one year when I uncovered them too early). But I haven't gotten earlier crops than those planted in Feb. Garlic is easy and can be planted anytime in the fall, I usually wait until I've cleared out the tomatoes in December. I just got organic garlic from the farmers' market the first time I planted. I've also planted interesting varieties of potatoes from tiny farmers' market varieties, and yesterday harvested my first fingerlings! Celery is fun to grow, and I like harvesting a stalk now and then, but it tends to bolt all of a sudden for me, so it's not so useful. I planted walla walla onions from nursery starts in January and harvested a great crop in the past month -- one was huge! (I baked them, they were so sweet it was like eating a crunchy dessert.) You probably know about the Sunset Garden Book -- if not, it's the one book you need. I don't have the latest version, so the format may have changed, but in the previous edition, there's a planting guide for vegs in the back, page 716-717, which is about as reliable as any other source I've found, excepting of course local experience.

Kansas sounds like a challenging place to grow too. After an impossibly hot late summer and early fall, we had cold fog and rain which is ideal for fall vegetables, followed by a dry hot furnace type wind that could dry out 72 cell trays overnight. Luckily(finally) my gardening insights are catching up with our weather extremes and I got out of bed before the blazing sun came up and watered them.I also moved the kale and lettuce to the north side of the house for a wind block and some time in the shade. Now we are back to cool and cloudy...and finally my Fall garden is taking hold good enough to withstand the dry next heat. Dino Kale can be pretty bitter. It's neat looking and the name is catchy. Sometimes it is good. Mine got bugs and eggs laid on it at times when Red Russian was bullet proof. Dino was the first to start looking and tasting bad as it warmed up. Ironically again red Russian winter kept going longer. My favorite until something else happens, is Red Russian.