How To Grow Celery at Home

I love to grow celery. This was grown in a raised bed in summer 2025.

Some vegetables I grow mainly to add a touch of luxury to my meals rather than to fill my belly. Celery is one of them. It’s not a crop that saves me money or that plays a vital role in my kitchen. But I grow it for the flavor! Celery brings a depth and freshness to food that makes every dish taste a little better. And besides, it’s such a beautiful plant to grow. In a good year, I can hardly believe that I’ve managed to grow something so striking in my own garden.

Read more: Growing celeriac in the garden

How to grow celery

Celery isn’t the easiest vegetable to grow. The main challenge is its long growing season. A lot can happen during those many months in the garden.

Sowing starts early, preferably in January or February. The seeds are tiny and should be sown on the surface of the soil. Not covered, but perhaps sprinkled with a little vermiculite instead.

Read more: What is vermiculite

The seeds take quite a while to germinate and the young plants grow slowly in the beginning. The seedlings are also very small and delicate, which makes them a bit tricky to take care of.

When they’ve grown big enough to handle, I transplant them one by one into small pots or plugs. As they continue to grow, they’ll need a slightly larger pot again before transplanting outside.

You can plant celery outside once the weather has turned spring-warm. But here’s a fun twist: you can also plant them out very early, even when it’s still cold, for example in a greenhouse. The plants will likely bolt in early summer, stressed by the chilly start — but before that happens, you’ll have plenty of tender stalks to harvest. Give it a try!

About five weeks after sowing in summer, the little celery plants have grown nicely. If you grow them indoors in winter, the process is much slower.

Grow as a microgreen

Here’s a tip if you want to grow celery at a time of year when it’s not possible outdoors: grow it indoors!

I like to grow celery as small plants and harvest them as shoots or tender stalks for sandwiches. It tastes wonderful. The flavor is mild and delicate, without that strong celery punch you get from mature plants.

If you’re growing under lights indoors, I recommend sowing a small cluster of seeds in one pot. They grow tightly together, and you can harvest individual stalks or snip off a few here and there as they grow.

This mini version of celery can of course be grown outdoors too! Sow in clusters in small pots or plugs, then plant them close together in the bed. Harvest by cutting off the small stalks.

Read more: White celery

It's easy to grow celery in a raised bed, as long as you remember to fertilize and water.

The lower leaves can look a bit worse for wear in summer, so I remove them for a nicer-looking plant.

The stalks are wide, crisp, and wonderfully fragrant.

New shoots often sprout from the lower part of the plant. These are just as good to use as the larger stalks.

A single seed of the Chinese white celery can produce a plant like this!

Most of the plant forms a generous bunch of lovely pale stalks, a bit slimmer than the celery we usually buy in stores.

Using celery

Celery is great in salads and other dishes, but I usually use it as a flavor booster since some in my family aren’t fond of raw celery. I slice it and freeze it for stews and soups, or simmer it together with tomatoes and other vegetables for sauces. It adds that wonderful “broth flavor” that makes everything taste better.

Celery is absolutely essential in homemade herb salt and an obvious choice for vegetable bouillon too.

If you want to preserve your harvest, slice the stalks thinly and dry them in a dehydrator. The flavor changes slightly when dried, but it’s still very useful in cooking.

Sliced celery dries quickly in a dehydrator and makes a lovely base for my herb salt.

Celery is also delicious fresh — finely shredded in salads or lightly sautéed with other vegetables.

The red celery variety is stunning! It’s called Giant Red and tastes just as good as the pale varieties, though sometimes a little firmer in texture.

I hope you feel inspired and try to grow celery in your own garden. It doesn’t need to be a big effort, just a handful of plants is plenty for most households. Sow around ten plants and you’ll have more than enough for your cooking.
/Sara at Skillnaden's