Minimum: 100+ Seeds This is not the celery you grew up with. Not even close. Peppermint Stick celery — also known as Candy Stripe — is one of the most visually arresting vegetables you can grow in a kitchen garden. The stalks are pale green to white at the base, streaked and splashed with vivid pink and deep red striping that runs the full length of the stalk, deepening toward burgundy in the outer ribs and softening to blush and cream toward the heart. The inner stalks can tip toward violet. The whole plant looks less like a vegetable and more like something someone designed — and yet every stripe, every color, every graduation is entirely natural, entirely the plant's own, produced by the same pigments that color beets and radicchio and red-veined sorrel. Stand it upright in a glass of water on a kitchen counter and people will ask what it is. Serve it raw on a board and it will be the first thing people reach for. The name is obvious the moment you see it. The history: Peppermint Stick is an Old English heirloom cultivar developed in the 1800s, when ornamental kitchen gardens were a marker of wealth and social standing among the English upper class. Rare, beautiful, and visually distinct from the common green celery available to everyone else, it was grown in the walled gardens of estates and manor houses as much for its appearance as its flavor — a vegetable that announced something about the garden it came from. For much of its early history it was simply not available to ordinary gardeners. It is, in that sense, a democratized luxury — a variety that once belonged exclusively to the privileged and now belongs to anyone with the patience to grow it. The flavor: Full, intense, and genuinely complex — this is what celery tastes like when it hasn't been bred down to blandness. Spicy, aromatic, and deeply savory with a crisp, juicy crunch and a faint sweetness that makes it more approachable than bitter. The leaves are intensely flavored — far more so than the commercial celery leaf — and make an exceptional fresh seasoning herb for soups, stews, and braises. Growers consistently describe the flavor as real celery, the way it used to taste before the grocery industry optimized everything for shelf life and uniformity. And unlike most colored vegetables that fade and gray in the pan, Peppermint Stick holds its striping when cooked — the pink and red stay vivid in soups, braises, and roasted dishes, which makes it as beautiful on the plate as it is in the garden. The plant: Vigorous, upright, and slow to bolt — a genuinely important characteristic in a crop that takes patience and consistent conditions to bring to harvest. Stalks reach 14 to 25 inches and are harvested from the outside in, beginning with the outer ribs and working toward the heart over an extended season. Biennial — grows vegetatively in its first year and produces seeds in the second — making it an excellent candidate for the seed-saving gardener willing to let a plant overwinter and complete its full cycle. Matures in approximately 80 to 85 days from transplant. Non-GMO. Open-pollinated. Heirloom. Seed-saving friendly — though isolation of at least three miles from other celery varieties is recommended to maintain color and flavor purity across generations. Grown without synthetic pesticides or chemical inputs. ✔️ Heirloom, open-pollinated, Non-GMO — seed-saving friendly ✔️ Striking candy-striped stalks — pink, red, white, and violet — holds color when cooked ✔️ Old English cultivar — historically reserved for the gardens of the wealthy ✔️ Full, intense, spicy celery flavor — far more complex than commercial varieties ✔️ Slow to bolt — extended harvest season, outer stalks first ✔️ Leaves and stalks both edible — leaves make exceptional fresh seasoning ✔️ Biennial — produces harvestable seed in year two ✔️ Grown without synthetic pesticides or chemical inputs ✔️ 80 to 85 days from transplant Growing notes: Celery is one of the more demanding vegetables in the garden — rewarding, but not forgiving of neglect. Start indoors 10 to 12 weeks before last frost. Seeds require light to germinate — press gently onto the surface of moist seed-starting mix and do not cover. Germination takes 14 to 21 days at soil temperatures of 60 to 75°F. Do not harden off by lowering temperatures — cold exposure below 55°F for extended periods can trigger bolting. Harden off by gradually increasing sun and wind exposure only. Transplant outdoors after frost risk has passed into rich, fertile, consistently moist soil with a pH of 6.0 to 7.0. Space plants 8 inches apart in rows 24 to 36 inches apart. Celery has shallow roots — mulch heavily, water deeply and consistently, and side-dress with fertilizer every three weeks. Harvest outer stalks from the base as needed throughout the season. An English manor garden variety in your raised bed. Candy-striped, deeply flavored, and unlike anything at the grocery store.
