[mrs bouquet]

Not sure where to post this, but here goes.      I remember when I was growing up, both my Grandfather and Father growing this lovely vegetable.    All through winter at high tea poor grandpa got the job in the cold scullery of scrubbing and prepping it.  Soot of course, was readily available, so mucky but delic.
I buy and use celery now all year,  but find that it is very stringy and I run the potato peeler down it.   Is this because it is being grown in Europe without blanching it up - is it grown in its plastic bags !      I still really enjoy using it with most things, but it is not the same, or is it a childhood memory.    Mrs Bouquet

[wighty]

In our house celery is called the 'forbidden vegetable' as neither daughter liked it.  We used to buy it and chop it up really small so they couldn't tell the difference between it and a bit of onion.  I        just get cross now that I can't buy a small amount and have several bags in the freezer.

[jezza]

hello modern celery is grown different to what you remember, your grandfather and father would have used a trench celery to get a blanched stem I worked in a local market garden we grew 7 acres of indoor celery  cutting every 4 weeks from March to October it was grown close together it was self blanching jezza

[rowlandwells]

I think its been said many times on this site that commercial grown veg never tastes he same as home grown and many of the old gardeners grew trench celery including my late father in law who grew lovely trench celery the stalks where tied up with paper and the soil drawn up to the plant so when it was harvested it had  long pink stalks and not stringy

we grew sorry try to grow celery every year including celeriac a traditional trench celery usually pink celery was called dirty celery because it needed washing well before eating hopefully our variety is a self blanching and like most things it needs cutting when its young and like many things trench celery  it pretty labour intensive and most seem to go for self blanching


I hate stringy celery and I think that's the reason why its stringy its cut when its getting old when its like that there's only one place for  that on the compost heap the celeriac well that's another try to do thing

[Growster...]

I easily recall my dad taking a stick of celery from a glass mug, half-full of water, and stringing it with a sharp knife to get rid of all the outside skin.

As we only ever chop celery into pieces about an eighth of an inch long nowadays (for soup, Waldorf salad etc), the problem never seems relevant anymore!

I reckon it's far too much work to grow your own these days, it takes so much effort for what is just a few pence, even though that really isn't the ethic we strive for here...