After a few futile attempts to grow celery in clay soil I gave up,
though I really, really like stuffed celery. However, for all other
purposes Cutting Celery is superior---soups, stews, you name it.
And this is the second year I have held over Cutting Celery in my living
room and on my porch. Thje growth slows down in winter but never
stops. It makes no difference to me---I would just as soon cut, dry and
crumble the leaves into a shaker bottle anyway---as convenient as using
salt and pepper.
I just cut off all the stalks and leaves, and will invest a couple hours
in stripping the leaves from the stalks. After that the oven does all
the work in drying. I would have preferred drying the leaves in the cab
of the pickup truck as I did last year (use the solar heat, but keep the
leaves out of the sunlight), but lazy is as lazy does---have to dry the
leaves in the oven now.
I will throw away the contents of last year's shaker bottle---seems
still good, but might be slightly less so than newly dried Cutting
Celery. No matter, unless we were running a restaurant, this batch is
more than can be used in a year if you lived completely on soups and stews.