How Celery Lost Its Strings
In the early to mid-20th century, American vegetables underwent a revolution. Dozens of varieties of vegetables in 1920s seed catalogs were obsolete by the early 1940s, replaced by new varieties that were uniformly better looking, better tasting, and conveniently sized. Seed breeder Harm Drewes, of Detroit, Michigan, was on a mission to create a stringless celery.
In the winter of 1928-29, celery fields in Michigan, Florida, and California were searched for stalks less stringy than the rest. These were taken to breeding stations where they were cross pollinated amongst themselves until a crisp, succulent, stringless celery was born.
The drawback to stringless celery? It was also green, in a time when yellow was the known and preferred celery color. The stringless celery was crossed with several long stemmed yellow varieties and in 1937 and 1939, two “virtually stringless” commercial celery strains were introduced.
Today, celery still has strings, but one can only imagine how much stringier the celery of the 1920s must have been. Yet the quest for stringless celery continues.
Photos here show the Wilmar Schubert celery farm near Wayzata, Minnesota, in 1936 as they prepared the celery beds for frost, and harvested, cleaned, and bundled the produce in preparation for farmers’ market sales. Harvested celery was buried under dirt and hay to protect it and preserve it until Thanksgiving.
Information on celery breeding from “How Celery Lost Its Strings: Eugenic Breeding Revolutionizes Vegetables” from the Kiwanis Magazine, published in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, November 20, 1941.
Photos of a Wayzata celery farm, from the Minneapolis Newspaper Photograph Collection in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections.
