Self blanching celery

The difference between ordinary and self blanching celery is how you grow them.  Celery is normally trenched and earthed up so that the stalks blanch and remain tender, whereas self blanching are planted at soil level but grown closer together so that they cast shadow on each other which also encourages them to grow taller (stalks then shouldn't be tough)

Celery like very fertile soil and need plenty of water, and preferably grown somewhere sheltered rather than somewhere exposed where the stalks toughen up to withstand the wind.

I'd say generally easy to grow but from my experience (though may have been the variety I grew), I found the stalks are better used diced in soups etc for flavour rather than eating fresh.  But at least they were easy to freeze (just dice, bag up and in the freezer) and I would take out what I needed whenever 

Plant them in a square block about 9 inches apart. The outside ones shade the inside ones and keep them blanched. If you can put some boards round the outside it will blanch the outside ones. Water, water and more water is the secret to keeping them tender. Usually mine only have a few tender stalks in the centre but the outside stalks are fine for cooking. You need to eat them before the frosts in the Autumn.

Trench celery is best not grown in a trench and earthed up. Better to plant on the level and then blanch by tying on thick paper or corrugated cardboard collars. Much more of a fiddle.

To get those supermarket thick celery stalks you need a lot of very regular irrigation right at the roots.

Given the replies I think I will try some at home as I can't get to the allotment every day, if they need that much. Water and attention .
Many thanks
John

I've put some Fenlander? celery in that I was given a couple of months ago.

I didn't have very high hopes for it because the person that had started them off must have put a packet of 1000 seeds into one tray and every one germinated and they were looking very anaemic, but I put them into a bed that I had been putting fresh rabbit poop onto and with that and the rain they're romping away.

I've lost one or two to snails so I'm going to try to transplant the disparate outlying ones so that they are back in a block, but I'm also going to try to shade them with some sprouts nearby to keep them tender and prevent them from going too green (which I don't like).