Apulica — Taste Travel Together

APULICA / FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND PULSES

Gesualdo celery

Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Fruit, vegetables and pulses · Campania

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked:

In brief

History and origin

In Gesualdo, an Irpinia village on the ridge between the Ufita and Calore valleys, celery is called accio. The village's market-gardening tradition is very old, helped by land rich in water and fertile soil, and its farmers, specialised in vegetables since time immemorial, were nicknamed menestrari, the greengrocers.

Until the 1980 earthquake some fifty families lived from growing vegetables, and above all this celery. The crop was sold at neighbourhood markets and in nearby villages, besides reaching home tables: the regional sheet records that about 30,000 plants were sold every week. The seed has been passed down for dozens of generations, with rules handed from father to son.

Today few families still grow it, and the variety is at risk from competition with modern celery and the abandonment of gardens. The Slow Food Presidium grew out of work with farmers, cooks and the whole community of Gesualdo, to involve young people and save this heritage. The celery is also listed among Campania's traditional products.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Sedano di Gesualdo · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura: Sedano di Gesualdo (prodotti tradizionali) · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)

Area and method of production

It is grown in the municipality of Gesualdo, in the province of Avellino, especially in the Pastene and Tremolito districts. Sowing takes place in mid-January in a seedbed, on soil enriched with well-rotted sheep manure; after about three weeks the shoots appear, and towards the end of April the seedlings are transplanted to the open field, about ten centimetres apart.

Cultivation is low-impact: three-year rotations with legumes, forage crops and cereals, mechanical or hand weeding, organic fertilisers and preferably biological pest control. The plant is hardy and vigorous and rarely attacked by fungi or pests. Regularly earthing up the soil loosens it and, according to tradition, helps blanch the stalk.

Harvest takes place between June and July. The best plants are left in the field until they flower to produce seed for the next season, a cycle that takes almost a year. Once picked, the celery is rinsed in marble basins so that the cool water keeps its green colour.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Sedano di Gesualdo · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura: Sedano di Gesualdo (prodotti tradizionali)

How to recognise it

Gesualdo celery has bright green stalks, thanks to the constant sun on its fields, and a green tuft too. The stalk is paler at the base, almost white, solid and rounded.

Compared with common celery it is slimmer, between three and six centimetres across, but taller: when mature the plant reaches 70-100 centimetres. The spacing between seedlings in the field determines their final size.

The flavour is sweet, and this is the trait that sets it apart at the table. Stalk and leaves contain potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium and vitamins, and the depth of colour varies with the light the plant receives as it grows.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Sedano di Gesualdo · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura: Sedano di Gesualdo (prodotti tradizionali)

In the kitchen

Its sweet flavour makes Gesualdo celery perfect eaten raw: as pinzimonio or in salads, where the solid, pale stalk and its sweet note can be enjoyed without cooking.

In the past families also used it to make decoctions and herbal teas, a home use that shows how present this vegetable was in the daily life of the village.

Today it is above all the local cooks, whom the Presidium calls true ambassadors of this vegetable, who showcase it in the kitchen and introduce it to visitors passing through Irpinia, alongside the other produce of the area's gardens and fields.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Sedano di Gesualdo

Where to taste it

The only place it comes from is Gesualdo, an Irpinia village in the province of Avellino, with its vegetable-growing districts of Pastene and Tremolito. The village sits on the ridge between the Ufita and Calore valleys, and the menestrari tradition is still tied to its gardens.

The right season is early summer: between June and July the celery is harvested, and the selling period can last a couple of months, because each plant picked used to be replaced at once by a new one to ensure continuous production.

Visitors to inland Irpinia can stop in Gesualdo and look for the celery in the cooking of the local restaurateurs who work with the Presidium, combining a taste with a walk through a village where the vegetable garden has always been part of its identity.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Sedano di Gesualdo · Regione Campania, Assessorato Agricoltura: Sedano di Gesualdo (prodotti tradizionali)

Protection

When

Where

Campania