The tiny farming action continues mainly indoors with the SEEDLINGS. I’m still starting away, staggering most things, but doing all of the tomatoes right now, all at once. The daily photos mostly tend to be—surprise!—extreme close-ups… So, while looking over today’s image harvest, the familiar plug trays and flats and well-separated seedlings seen up close for a sudden instant looked completely alien and bizarre. All that segregation and attempt at TOTAL PLANT CONTROL looked kinda…crazy. Plug trays: two seeds per cell, packaged under plastic, stuck under kinda ghastly cool white fluorescent lights. Tiny rosemary and celery seedlings (off to a much later than usual start), partitioned off in their own fibrepak flats. Little plant captives, brightly lit, carefully tended. Fanatically patrolled mini-monocultures. Yikes! Of course, the feeling quickly passed. Guess I just wanna get outdoors! :)
celery
Celery!
Celery has been surging up over the last day or so, 10 days after seeding. This is Utah 52-70, a pretty common variety. Celery is a member of the carrot family (Apiaceae), along with parsley, parsnip, fennel, Gotu Kola, caraway, cumin, CARROTS, cilantro/coriander, chervil, dill, anise, hemlock. Cool family! It also has a reputation for being hard to grow: maturity in up to 4-5 months, cold-sensitive seedlings, needs lots of moisture. Any two of those three can make it a challenge in this garden, especially with the crazy weather. As great as it would be to grow, celery hasn’t been high on my list! Well, it’s started now, and we’ll see what happens…