Have you been able to purchase any decent celery lately?

Although celery isn’t one of my favorite vegetables, and it’s not one of the more nutrient-packed ones, I do like to eat it once in a while. In addition, I’ve just started drinking smoothies and celery is a good thing to add occasionally along with fruits and spinach or kale.

However, I haven’t been able to find any even average-looking celery lately.

I’m headed to Costco right now to return this celery. Now, Costco, even though it has the best blueberries and other berries consistently, has celery that’s often a little funky looking. So, recently, I bought some hoping that I could eat most of it. However, as the photo shows, it was awful.

On Friday, I had two friends over for tea. For a vegetable tray, I purchased some celery at Safeway. Same problem. It was low quality. In addition, the celery was really dirty. Also, I didn’t notice until after the tea party that some of the top stocks were rotten. I returned it for a refund.

I tried the local food co-op on Saturday. At last, I found some good-looking celery. I was lucky. Often the co-op’s celery is skinny and looks discolored, too.

Apparently, growing problems in California, the main area where celery is grown, has had problems such as fire and drought. In addition, the popularity of celery for juicing has increase demand, which we all know, affects supply.

It seems that’s affecting price as well as supply and quality. I paid $2.79 a pound of celery at the co-op. I didn’t even notice. The price at Costco was $2.31 a pound.

Expect 2023 to continue to be a tough year for celery and other fruits and vegetables as well. With climate change and a worldwide fertilizer shortage, we’ll likely see lower quality, shortages, and higher prices.