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Originally Posted by luigiwu
Does celery bolt in the heat like lettuce? I've also been reading about a type of herb that has a celery type flavor? I'm particularly interested in growing plants this year that are flagged to be heavily doused with pesticide in the supermarkets..
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According to what I read, celery is at risk of bolting when temperatures drop below 50 F, not in the heat. I was worried about that, but in fact my Utah 52/70 celery was not affected by any of the ups and downs of temperature, and only finally bolted in the second year after over wintering.
The risk to celery in the heat is that it will dry out and become tough / hollow? and bitter - they're best kept in a sheltered spot and feed and water generously kept moist. They seem to tolerate shade really well, so maybe try a shady spot if you are concerned about summer heat. Wind is an issue here so in summer the celery can dry out in the field if there's no shelter and get overly strong tasting or other 'dry' effects - I planted a row for my Mom behind and shaded by her tomatoes, and they were fine there and perfect quality.
The herb that tastes like celery is the Chinese leaf celery or cutting celery "Kin Tsai". Leaves are too bitter to eat raw IMO but the stalks were nice - they are a lot thinner than celery but otherwise very similar. (even crunchy).
I hear you on the pesticide issue, and really I was stoked with the quality of home grown celery in all ways. You can grow celery in a container indoors in winter too, just harvest the outer stalks as needed, and the core will keep on sprouting new ones. This is what we did with our garden celery too, just harvest by the stalks instead of pulling whole plants, and they keep producing. The 52/70 wasn't as tall as the stuff you see in the supermarket so we were pulling a stalk little more than a foot long (cw supermarket stuff close to 2 ft). Delicious, juicy and crisp.