Guest Post from Linda at Practical Parsimony. Thank you, Linda–I’m going to have to try this!
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| April 8, 2011–celery on day ten at 4 inches |
No, I do not like to buy celery. It is rather over-priced in my opinion. As long as I can grow even what I have in the last ten days, cheaply, I will not buy the expensive, poisoned vegetable, celery. This is the first of many plants I intend to grow with the bottom, usually discarded, celery head. No more pesticides for me. I never see organic celery. Maybe I don’t look in the right place in town.
This will be a cut-and-come-again plant, used for fresh and eventually cut for dehydrating. My plan is to dehydrate as much as I can with this plant and future celery plants gotten using the same method. Then, I can put dehydrated celery in my coffee bean grinder and make single plant powders and combinations as I experiment.
Someone had a blog post with a tutorial on how to grow celery from the end of the stalk, you know–what you cut off and do not eat. I just knew I would remember who wrote the blog post and refer to it when I grew my own celery. If you know who had the tutorial, I will be glad to reference it.
When I did the celery rescue and froze it, I had cut off the end with the intention of growing celery like the blogger did. It was just too cold and wet to sit in the back yard that day. I put the end of the celery in a small bowl of water. Too late, I remembered that the water with fluoride and chlorine might kill the possibility of sprouting. Never fear. It did start growing in the water.
Today, April 2, I got all my supplies out for this experiment. Yes, some time ago I had purchased soil in which to germinate seeds. No, I have not done that yet. Anyway, here goes:
These are the supplies I took outside. Of course, the box holds more than the pots. The gallon vinegar jug is cut around the top. Just below the handle about two inches is uncut. No picture except this one. I put three V-cuts in the bottom of the jug for drainage. Then, I decided I needed to take pictures. To germinate seeds, I would cut only about 5 inches from the bottom, leaving the top as a tall greenhouse. Since the celery may need more soil, I chose to cut the jug higher.
Cut the holes or slits for drainage before you cut the top. Since I cut around the jug first, it was unstable, leading me to fear I was going to cut myself as the jug kept collapsing as I struggled to cut with the utility knife.
Here, I have filled the jug with soil, heaped up. In the bottom of the jug you can see the natural, unbleached coffee filter I used to retain soil in the jug.
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| in water for three days |
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| planted at three days, just after the above picture in water |
I will be planting more celery as I get the bottoms, from where I have no idea at the moment. The plan is to dehydrate and make some celery powder by putting the dehydrated celery in with other vegetables I grow, dehydrate and grind. I am thinking of using the combinations I use most often–garlic, celery, onions and bell peppers. Of course, I don’t have or use the powders. I use the fresh or frozen vegetables for the taste. Or, I could have the plain specimen of each powdered, dehydrated vegetable.
The celery at the top of the page is the result of five minutes work. It took ten days to reach this point, six days of the ten were days spent in soil.
Your turn
Have you ever planted and grown celery this way? If so, how tall did it grow? How successful would you describe your efforts? Who is going to try to grow celery this way?
Keep preparing! Angela
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I’m totally going to try it. I go through a lot of celery and I have too many ends in my freezer waiting to be dumped into the stockpot already. I’ll try this with the next several. Love the idea and the coffee filter idea, too! Thanks!
I tried this after reading how on Practical Parsimony. Its working!
I just use the celery seed and grow the leaf celery, mainly has leaves and less stalk. I grow it in a pot usually. Haven’t got anything started though since I moved since I am busy doing other things right now. Think it is called culinary celery, not sure but it is with herb seeds usually.
Adele
I did this last year and it was quite successful. I just cut the end off the celery and planted it right into my garden. I had celery to eat within a month. Only problem I found was I started too late in the growing season.
This year I am experimenting with green tail onions (scallions). Doing the same thing…. absolutely nothing to them except planting them in the garden.
Good luck with your celery.
Ever try growing lovage? It’s an herb with the characteristic taste of celery and it’s easy to dry.
Planting celery all along would assure that some new celery was ready each week, giving the cut celery a chance to grow out again. Sad news: during the turmoil after the tornado ripped our town apart here in north AL, I managed to kill the celery by overwatering it. Well, it was dark and I just tried to console myself by watering the celery, lots, I suppose. Anyway, I will start over with celery I found for 79 cents/head.
Well, I think you’re overthinking it. Seriously, I’ve been tossing my celery butts into wet compost buckets & leaving them alone since who knows when. It’s just like growing pineapple tops… leave it alone & it will grow.
;)
If it will grow in compost buckets, doesn’t that mean the compost did not get hot enough? I have thrown lots of celery for years into my compost bin and have never gotten celery.
Thank you! This was very informative! Love the project! I am going to try it!
Our family (people and dogs) are HUGE celery lovers. I’m excited to try this idea! I love the jugs too. It will allow me to keep the growing celery away from our munching canine kids. Since we use TONS of vinegar here, it won’t be a problem to get an empty bottle.
I have yet to see it done with “success” and am very interested if anyone has. It starts of great….but does not complete.
The idea came from here…
http://chickensintheroad.com/farm-bell-recipes/re-growing-celery/
I saw this tutorial and I’m happy to know that others have tried it: http://moderndaymoms.com/project-corner-re-growing-celery/ … I am so excited to know that some of the veggies sitting in my fridge can be cut and planted because I am ready to start my garden and this will make it faster (and cheaper). I’m going to do onions (green, vidalia and yellow), potatoes, celery, and peppers all from fresh.
Thanks for the article and the links to the success stories! I’ve got a celery end that’s been sitting in a glass of water next to the kitchen window for a couple of weeks and it’s starting to bush out (still too cold out there to plant, tho) and was wondering if it’s fine to plant it indoors while waiting for Spring… judging by the responses here, it’s an All Systems Go! yay!
When should I plant my “window sill” celery outside? I live in north east florida
I am not sure–I’m a long ways from Florida. ;) You’ll probably get your best information with your local extension office or gardening center. They’ll know when is a good time to plant in your area.
I’m going to try this. BTW, I bought organic celery yesterday at Trader Joe’s.
To do this, do you have to plant outdoors or can it be grown indoors during the winter? Did you use potting soil?