How to Regrow Celery ~ from kitchen scraps
We have a small backyard garden and we love to grow our own food. Growing celery seems too fussy until I found this post. We always have a celery stalk in the fridge, and until now the base has been simply discarded to the chickens. No longer! Ready to learn how regrowing celery works?
Sustainable Food Scraps ~ gardening with kids
Simply chop the base from the celery stalk, leaving about 2 inches. Place it in a dish of water in a sunny location. Something that easy sounds too good to be true. But that is all you need to do.
Notice how yellow the center leaves are. That is the area that we will be watching for growth.
You will start noticing changes quickly. After just a couple days in the water, you should see the celery’s center leaves starting to grow. No roots will be visible yet.
After just 1 week, the center leaves should change color and starting to poke up a little bit. Still no roots at this point.
Make your own mini green house
Since our house does not have wonderful sunny windows for growing plants. So we resorted to creating a mini green house, and taking the celery outside. The weather is warming up, but it is still cool outside at nights. The inverted plastic box helped to regulate the temperature and keep it moist. Notice all the moisture on the side of the container. This is also a great way to start seeds, but just make sure you are checking on your plants/seeds, so they don’t get too hot or dry out.
Our celery has been growing in only water for three weeks. We are just getting aroung to transplanting it into soil. This step could be done sooner. I am amazed at how little attention our little celery plant needed. Which is perfect for our house:)
Notice the difference between the 3 week old celery plant and the “new” celery base. There is no growth on the new plant yet, but it will happen really quickly!
We finally transplanted our little celery and he is so happy! I am curious how long it will take before our little celery plants are ready to be eaten.
Tips for growing Celery:
- Celery does not grow well in hot conditions, so make sure you give your celery plant adequate water and shade during the hottest part of the day. If your plant does not receive enough water, it will become tough and stringy. YUCK! So keep your plant hydrated!
- You can remove only a few stalks of celery at a time. No need to harvest the whole plant. When doing this, make sure you remove the outer stalks first and let the less developed inner stalks continue growing. Take care not to damage the rest of the plant if removing individual stalks.
The kids love snacking on celery, so we are really excited to see how it tastes! They think it will be AMAZING to run out to the garden and “sneak” a celery stalk. There is something about growing your own food that is really satisfying!
You also might want to try our simple tutorial on how to Regrow Lettuce.
