Plant Profile - Leaf Celery: The Very Useful Plant With Many Names

Leaf celery's scientific name is Apium graveolens var secalinum - this tells us that it is a variety of regular celery (Apium graveolens). Leaf celery is also called cutting celery, parcel, smallage, Zwolsche Krul, and German celery - maybe it has other names as well. Many names indeed!

Leaf celery looks like a more robust and larger version of parsley. In the picture to the right, you can see its size compared to a quart jar. It tastes exactly like (regular) celery, but the leaf celery has a somewhat stronger taste than stalk celery. The plant is a biennial, meaning that it grows lots of foliage the first year and produces seed the second year, then dies. It is grown as an annual, starting new seeds each year (unless you want to save seeds, of course).

Leaf celery is much easier to grow than its "big brother". Every time I read the instructions for growing regular celery, I decide that it's just not worth the bother. But the leaf variety is an absolute cinch. I started the seeds indoors, in my usual seed-starting manner - nothing special. The seeds are small and the little seedlings are very thready and delicate. It's good to water them from the bottom at first, until they become more robust. When the little plants were large enough and after the last frost, I transplanted them to the garden (although I've since discovered that it's very hardy and can be planted out in early spring).

And then I totally ignored the plants except for watering them when the rest of the garden was watered (very seldom in this wet, wet summer). It doesn't get much easier than this! It can also be grown indoors on a sunny window sill in winter, and I will try it this winter. I'll start the seeds next week.

In late July, I picked a large bunch of leaf celery and dried it in my food dehydrator and it has kept its flavor very nicely. It's a cut-and-come-again plant and grew back beautifully. This week, I picked another large bunch, but this time I made "leaf celery ice cubes" out of it. I whirled the leaves (in batches) in my blender with a little water until they were a thick slurry. Then I poured the slurry into ice-cube trays and froze it that way. When the ice cubes were frozen hard, I popped them out of the trays and put them in a freezer bag. Now I can just pull out a "celery cube" this winter whenever I want that good celery flavor in a soup or stew. ( I do this with fresh basil too, by the way. It won't hold the texture, but it preserves that wonderful "fresh basil" taste.) To sum it up: try leaf celery: you'll like it!