Carol, I bet it did grow well there in spite of the short growing season. I'm assuming they started their transplants indoors to get them large enough to plant out once the temps were in the appropriate range. And it is the exposure to sunlight that made the celery so green. Most commercially-raised celery is that whitish-green because the celery is blanched. I think the blanching is intended to keep the stalks tender as too much sunlight/heat gives you tougher stalks. Seedmama, Here's how Jeff Cox grows celery: GROWING CELERY: Several years ago I purchased a book by Jeff Cox called "Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas". It is a terific book and I love it. One of his ideas is a way to grow celery even if you can't give it the marshy conditions it prefers. If I ever tried to grow celery here, I'd try Jeff's method. To start his seeds, he sows them 10 weeks before his last frost. He soaks his seed overnight before sowing them in peat pots and setting them on top of the fridge so the heat can help them sprout, which can take 2 weeks or longer. He digs a below-grade trench about a foot wide and 14" deep although he says you can do the same process with a raised bed if you'd rather build up than dig down. If growing in a raised bed, he recommends a minimum height of 6" and cautions anything raised any higher may get too hot for the celery. You still need 14" of depth, but with the 6" tall raised bed, you only have to dig down 8" instead of the whole 14". You remove the soil to a depth of 14" for the trench or 8" beneath the eventual raised bed and remove all the soil. Add compost and other organic amendments to create an enriched growing mix that will hold lots of moisure and refill the trench or, for the raised bed, refill the dug-out area and build the 6" tall raised bed above it. By the way, he recommends six celery plants per person. If you want, you can add tin cans with the tops and bottoms both removed or pieces of PVC pipe inserted vertically into the ground about to the same depth that your celery is planted, or a couple of inches deeper than that. To water, fill each can or piece of pipe with water and let the pipe carry the water down to the root level of the celery plants. In the illustration in the book, he has one vertical can or PVC pipe in between two celery plants in a sort of checkerboard pattern. (Texas tomato plant growers use this method to water tomatoes, only they use large flower pots or huge, instituitional-sized cans, to water the tomato plants...it is called the Texas Pot method.) After you harden off your seedlings, transplant them into the enriched soil which you've pre-moistened so it it nice and damp. He waters his transplants with an organic fertilizer consisting of 1 T. fish emulsion and 2 T. seaweed extract per one gallon of water. Mulch the top of the bed with leaves. As the plans grow keep adding leaves so the stalks are blanched. Blanching celery stalks (but not their topgrowth leaves which need sunlight to grow) helps improve their flavor and keep them tender. This is especially important in a hotter climate where heat stress can cause the stalks to get woody and tough. He recommends feeding monthly and watering as often as needed to keep the bed moist and damp but not soaking wet. His recommendation is that you harvest the plants roots and all before frost arrives in the fall. Store them in a box in a cool basement or similar area. If the storage area stays cool enough, celery will store for months. You also could store them in an extra fridge in your garage or laundry room or whatever. If you ever run across Jeff's book, it is a wonderful book with projects grouped by the season. Dawn

jcheckers - Thanks for bumping this thread. Dawn, great info - it could not come at a better time. I have a couple of questions and some info to share. I've been sowing seed for spring broccoli, kale, Chinese cabbage, mustard spinach, lettuce, etc. and preparing beds for onion plants and potatoes. Most of the spring broccoli crop will be Piricicaba (thanks for the recommendation). I just harvested the last of the fall-planted broccoli - the plants were ratty looking and windburned (I forgot to replace the row cover) but most were still making small buds. I read that Piricicaba was developed to provide edible leaves. I was curious about this so did a taste test of Piricicaba leaves v. leaves of Superdome, Windsor, and Premium Crop. Piricicaba leaves were tasty and very tender. Leaves of the other broccoli varieties were very tough. Piricicaba has another benefit - lots of edible leaves - in addition to being heat tolerant. I used the last leaves and heads in a Thai stir-fry. Very good!. I picked up 10# bags of red, yellow, and russet organic potatoes at a Whole Foods. Most have small sprouts. I put the potatoes on trays next to a glass door so they get lots of light. Then I recalled someone saying that they had Irish potatoes in a closet. Someone else said sunlight will turn potatoes green. Should I put the potatoes in darkness or light to sprout? Is sun pouring through a glass door too much light? Has anyone grown Komatsuna (AKA Mustard spinach). Farmerdill gives it high marks so I decided to try it this year. Regular spinach doesn't grow well here so I've given up on it. I'd like to find more good greens for spring. I've been looking at Evergreen Seeds (link below) They say "Komatsu is a fast-growing vegetable and is ready for harvest 35 days after sowing in warm climates. Plants can be grown all year round in temperate and subtropical areas." Sounds too good to be true! Does anyone have experience growing Chinese cabbage (Bok choi, pak choi)? If yes, did you grow them in the spring or fall? Recommended varieties? Many thanks! Pam Here is a link that might be useful: Evergreen Seeds - vegetables

Courtney, You know, I just had to pass on the USO story to you after I read it in Sunday's paper because positive media coverage on any military issue is so rare anymore! We have turtles everywhere this year, much more so than in past years. Even in a year where I rarely see a turtle, there is always one or two plodding around the yard and garden, eating whatever strikes their fancy. This year, there's more than one or two! They are even digging up bermuda grass and laying their eggs right in the yard. Hmmm? An animal that digs up bermuda grass? I need more of those! Cutworms are sneaky. I can have 50 bush bean plants and they'll take out only 1 or 2 here or there, some years. Other years, they go right down the row and saw them all down. Some of them eat everything they cut. Some don't. Sometimes what I think is cutworm damage is actually plants being gnawed in two and then devoured by pillbugs/sowbugs (Slug-go snail and slug killer takes care of those bugs). Sometimes birds will nip young plants in half and it resembles cutworms. So, a lot of times, if you can't see the pest while it is active, it is hard (impossible!) to be sure what the pest is. Congratulations on the harvest! I love fresh chives. For a few years I had huge rows of chives as a edging on both sides of a raised bed that was 4' wide by 30' long. Last year, they mostly died when I gave up and quit watering the garden in June. However, a few came back and I transplanted them into my cottage border. Your Veggie Garden 'lessons learned' are priceless. I am here to tell you that learning these things 'the hard way' is the most fun! I agree that some weeds are good in the garden. By being smart and observing what bugs like what weeds, you will learn which weeds to allow as a 'trap crop' for pests. The main reason I interplant herbs and flowers in my veggie garden is because they attract beneficial insects OR trap harmful insects making them easy to catch/kill, OR improve the flower of a veggie (like borage and basil improve tomato flavor). It doesn't hurt that they are pretty or that they smell good too! This is also the reason I plant a mixed cottage border around my veggie bed. For what it is worth, I ALWAYS plant too many pumpkins and winter squash and ornamental gourds and I ALWAYS plant them too close together. Some years, disease and pests will wipe out some of them, but since I overplanted, I always have plenty. In a good year, I will have wheelbarrow loads and they make GREAT late summer to late autumn displays around the yard, garden and barn. After that, I give them to the dogs to play with and to the compost pile to feed it. Often, the pumpkins/witer squash/gourds reseed in the dog yard where they climb the fence, and in the compost pile, where they cover it up and hide it pretty well. Oh, if you have a fairly cool space to store them, some pumpkins and winter squash can be stored for MONTHS and then eaten, too. I have kept fall-harvest pumpkins in my tornado shelter until as late as February and March some years, and they were just fine for cooking/eating. I have also kept fall-harvested winter squash in my garage through the spring without a serious loss of quality. I am glad you are having a wonderful June in the garden. Now, if it would only stop raining! Dawn

I'm not sure to what to attribute my success with onions. It isn't a special knowledge. For example, I just learned about "water mold," a common and sometimes serious onion disease. It's why even large onion farms are using drip irrigation rather than overhead sprinklers. I use the sprinklers and have some problem with water mold every year. It doesn't damage them all that much. I was briefly reading about planting by the moon the other day. They put onions in the root crop category. Onion bulbs aren't roots. They are the base of the leaves. Onions have plenty of stringy roots. Fertilize them more like corn or lawn grass. Those leaves need to grow to produce good bulbs. Leeks and bunching onions don't form bulbs but need that high N fertilizer, too. My leeks struggle through the summer heat. I will get some fish emulsion on them soon so that they can take advantage of the cooler days ahead to make some growth. All these weeks since they sprouted indoors back about the first week of February. They won't gain baseball bat size in this climate but they really should after all this time. Nothing like leek and potato soup so I'm happy to have them in the garden. Steve