Celery Seedlings

Good morning all, i hope everything is good with you and yours!!                                                          I had a question about celery that i was hoping anyone could help me with.   I am growing Celery indoors from seed and they are about 2-4 millimeters up from top of seed mix and kind of crowded together. So my question is when and how would i go about separating them?               I know i'll have to pick the best of the best from my plants when it's time to thin, and i sure can't grow all 110 seedlings to fruition i don't have the room nor do i want that much celery at once.  But right now some are so close together than i am afraid they will all suffer and i won't have any!                                                                
Please and thank you to any who help me & i hope everyone has a nice day regardless of helping me or not!!!

                Happy Planting and Growing 

No useful suggestions. I'm waiting for mine to sprout. I'm hoping people have some useful info. I initially carefully spread a few seeds in each designated cell, then I looked at all the leftover soaked seeds, and dumped them in with the others!

Let them grow to about 2 inches ( %0 mm ) long in the tray /pot out in the green house so tey get a decent amount of day light but not getting baked by the sun , they will creep along the surface of the soil & will tangle up . keep them lightly watered two or three times a day .
the growth will be fast so you won't be tied to looking after the baby  plants for long .


When two inches long  float the pot in room temp water for an hour to thoroughly soften the soil and make parting much easer without any damage to the plants .

 Find some where out of the sun in the shade for the separation & transplanting .

Gently tease the tangled plants apart with a pencil point etc.. ( nothing sharp ) , carefully lift a teased out plant on a pencil tip  into a prepared 1 inch deep hole in the compost of a 2 inch pot .
Make sure the compost is well wetted  , once down the hole gently water in with room temp rain water . Now put to one side out of strong sunshine .
 Only do one teased out plant at a time as any drying out of the hair roots will set the plant back .


Having planted them all  up in 2 inch pots ,  grow on till they are about 4 inches  ( 100 mm ) tall them plant out into a well manured deep bed down a 2 inch deep well watered hole & "puddle the plant in "  with room temp water so as not to shock the plant .


Perhaps  use lifts to increase the MM depth around the growing plants as the grow or use  paper collars  .
This will " blanch the celery " , give it a white colour and keep it sweet so long as you have a good watering regime .

Having a greater depth of MM round the celery ( akin to earthing up but using lifts instead ) gives a much better hand of celery than wrapping paper or  corrugated cardboard collars around the plants as it tends not to dry out so fast .
 

 Tip
We cut the greenery tops off two hands of celery in November before the weather got fouler than normal and dried them in the boiler cupboard ( used the stalks in big batches of stews and soups there & then etc.
 
When dry we then crumbled them into small heat sealed vac packs for stews & seasoning.
They are fantastic .. we used the last pack this weekend in a gallon batch of veg & chicken stock soup.

 The 10 or so over wintered " celery stumplings " we've got in our  ANSFG beds are being grown solely for dehydrating and vac packing as a dried herb .

Thank you! It hard to find much info at all on growing celery from seed. Not sure why!

plantoid wrote:
 Find some where out of the sun in the shade for the separation & transplanting .

Gently tease the tangled plants apart with a pencil point etc.. ( nothing sharp ) , carefully lift a teased out plant on a pencil tip  into a prepared 1 inch deep hole in the compost of a 2 inch pot .
Make sure the compost is well wetted  , once down the hole gently water in with room temp rain water . Now put to one side out of strong sunshine .
 Only do one teased out plant at a time as any drying out of the hair roots will set the plant back .
  .

I separated and up-potted several celery sprouts this spring.  Two of the seedling pots were even from last fall and they somehow managed to survive over the winter with hit and miss watering.  Gentle is the word.  I also use a pencil to make the hole, help ease the roots down it and gently push mix back towards the roots. I used the kitchen island to do all the separations and up-potting as it is a good working height for me. Again, gentle is the key for transplanting any seedling.