At least 2000 good seeds are in there. Wow, in that teaspoon?
"In that teaspoon.
It's a teaspoon that would produce enough celery heads to feed thousands of families.
teaspoon of seed, sprinkled in the tray. And they're left. They're left to germinate and
then later on when they're bigger and these are getting a wee bit bigger now...[and I'll
get you an individual plant.
So this would produce one little celery, one head of celery?
Yes, eventually.
Stan Clarke has been a vegetable farmer in Pukekohe for 60 years.
50 of those spent just growing celery.
"And this is what they look like....and that's a celery plant. Out of a cell tray. And that's
all ready to be planted in the field....
And while celery isn't a staple part of most people's diets, according to Stan, it's got
its benefits.
Well it's a love - hate relationship, you either love it or you hate it and those that
like it, they would know what they could do with it.
What would you use it for? What would I use it for? An Aphrodisiac?
Good to know
After 8 weeks in the greenhouse nursery, these celery plants are then taken out and replanted
in the fields.
So your dad says the celery was an aphrodisiac? Is that true or not?
Yeah, i've heard the rumours and i've seen the articles on it, don't think it did any
favours for me though.
That's David, Stan's son, who's taken on the family business.
So these celery transplants here, they've been planted in stages. That first lot there
that's been planted about 4 weeks ago, planted by machinery. We used to do it all by hand
but once again technology moved on and helped us out.
This field is one of three sections the Clark family farms.
Each section producing hundreds of thousands of celery heads a year.
So each one of those plants will grow into a good head of celery and hopefully return
a good profit for us and we can carry on with the next planting.
What was it like as a child growing up on a celery farm?
Oh it was a lot of fun. We used to get all down, dirty. Throwing mud at each other. The
only thing I didn't like was working on a Sunday in the rain. But ah, we quickly got
to accept that that was part of it. It's not the most glamorous job in the world
but it certainly can be one of the most funny and enjoyable if you want it to be.
Over on the next farm, the celery is ready to be harvested.
So I'll just look for the base of the celery and it's that white butt end of the celery
and I'll place it right on the bottom of it and just push it. And there we go, just as
simple as that. And then we just remove some of these smaller shoots and give it a general
clean up and then give it a top.
And now, it's off to the packing shed.
There's bins of celery down the far end and the staff over there take it out and put the
celery in to a large tub.
The celery is washed in a bath that has a sanitizing agent in it.
It's then stored in crates in a cool room at the back of the shed.
and that's how it's sold and distributed to retailers
Each supermarket or any supermarket, they can individually take one crate or two crates
or 20 at a time if they want to.
How many crates do supermarkets take normally?
Oh they're all different, some of the bigger Pak n Saves, like the one in Albany is huge.
Like, I wouldn't even know how many they would take. Probably 40, 50 of those a day?
The produce managers will then remove them from the crates and put them on the display
shelves and the consumer hopefully will come and buy them.
Celery juice health challenges are currently trending on social media, with influencers
such as the medical medium with over 3 million followers leading the way. The medical medium
claims there are a series of health benefits from juicing celery sticks.
But David says he prefers to keep it simple.
Some people just put cheese and peanut butter on there. But I'm one for just eating it as
it is, as we know, it doesn't add any calories and the waste line keeps nice and trim. Couldn't
recommend it anymore.