Self blanchig celery help!

Hi
I am growing self blanching celery (Loretta) for the first time this year. I seems to be doing very well excepting that the 'stalks' are very thin - just 1 - 1.5 cm across.

Is this normal?

Is there a problem here?

And, would it help if I tied them up into bunches with garden twine?

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

Keep on watering, watering, watering, but try to water the soil and not the heart of the plants.

They will grow a lot in the next few weeks and the stems at the centre will be tender. There seems to be a lot of waste outside leaves. Mostly I have found it difficult to produce much that is edible raw, but it is fine for cooking.

Their peak will probably be the end of September. You must finish them before the first sharp frost.

Oh yes, they do like plenty of water.

Don't forget to water them 

I found that it bulked up a lot in the last couple of months, but I was giving it a good soaking with buckets of water every time I visited the allotment. I'm on clay, but it's amazing how much water you can throw on without ever getting the soil very wet as it gets sucked up in no time.

I gave up in the end as there were too many slugs and worms getting into the hearts and ruining the quality.

Especially when you can buy a bunch for 49p.  Not worth the effort. 

Yes, that was the clincher for me, it's not like you can say the taste of home grown is amazingly different. A lot of effort for little real return as I'm not a big consumer of celery.