How much should a stalk of celery cost?

 How much should a stalk of celery cost?

There they are, piled high in the produce section of your local supermarket, celery plants: a tight collection of fibrous stalks and leaves offered, usually, at so much a pound. I think the price is usually rather cheap, though you may beg to differ.

To follow the development of a celery plant, or any other plant, from seed to a ‘marketable’ commodity, is a stress-strewn epic journey whose story is beyond the time I have available to explain. But consider: for a seed to be viable, and true to type, it must be grown and harvested under very controlled conditions. And as celery is a biennial, for a plant to set seed it has to be maintained for two years. Then, should the selected plants have produced a quantity of seed sufficient to justify harvest, there is winnowing and cleaning, testing for viability (germination percentage), and then there are the packaging and advertising and handling and transportation costs to consider. Finally, perhaps, we have celery seed available to the market suitable for planting.

Now, the farmer who has elected to grow celery for the consumer market must prepare beds and fields appropriately. And that is just the beginning. The process of growing a plant from seed to a product suitable for sale is long, expensive, and often very complicated, or at least time consuming. From greenhouse seedlings to field planting; timely watering and fertilizing, pest control - of insects, rodents, small omnivores, ungulates, and others that trespass in the dead of night. Then there is the spring/fall worry about a late or early frost (alarms at three or four am that cannot be ignored!). And there are a myriad other devastating things, beyond the imagination of the grower, that can and often do take place. One mistake in this journey/folly and an entire crop may be rendered worthless.

Try growing celery from seed in your backyard garden to get an idea as to what I mean. In fact, try growing almost any vegetable from seed to an acceptable standard of size, color, quality etc. and I think you will find that produce is cheap at almost any price.