I found this great post on regrowing celery and we had to try it. We have a small backyard garden and we love to grow our own food. We have never tried growing celery before because it seemed too fussy. We always have a celery stock in the fridge, and until now the base has been simply discarded to the chickens. No longer! The base of a store bought celery is what this experiment uses, which means this experiment is basically free. Love that! We are so excited to start regrowing celery plants.
Simply chop the base from the celery stalk, leaving about 2 inches. Place it in a dish of water in a sunny location. It sounded easy enough and really too good to be true. I’m sure this is NOT necessary, but the kids enjoyed spraying the celery with water. What ever works to keep them interested right:) Notice how yellow the center leaves are. That is the area that we will be watching for growth.
Things start changing rather quickly. After just a couple days in the water, our celery’s center leaves started growing slightly. No roots were visible yet. The kids were amazed that it was actually growing (and so was I!).
After just 1 week, the center leaves were changing color and starting to poke up a little bit. There were still no roots that we could find.
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.
The celery that is growing, has been in the water for three weeks. We should have already transplanted it into soil, but oh well some day soon. I am amazed at how little attention these little plants need. Which is perfect for our house:) The “new” celery base was just added to the water yesterday. There is no growth 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.
Here are a few helpful tips I found when searching for information about regrowing celery. Celery does not grow well in hot conditions, so make sure you give your celery plant adequate water. If your plant does not receive enough water, it will become tough and stringy. YUCK! Hope I can keep this little guy hydrated!
Also, know that it is possible to remove only a few stalks at a time rather than harvesting 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 stock. There is something about growing your own food that is really satisfying!
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Tammy
a trick I learned from my great-grandma for growing long celery stocks is to shade the plant by placing a 3 or 5 gallon pail that has had the bottom cut out of it around the plant. Otherwise, I find the celery bushes out and makes lots of leaves rather than nice long juicy stalks. Hope that helps!
I work as the curriculum developer for a museum and I stumbled onto your ideas today and look forward to using variations of your creative project ideas for some of our science based summer camps. So on behalf of educators and moms alike, thanks!
As for the celery hydration conundrum, try using polymer crystals. You can usually get them at a craft store already hydrated to put into flower vases, but you can also buy them “dry” (I get mine from SteveSpanglerScience.com). Kids LOVE watching them expand right before their eyes and you can start seeds (and watch as the roots develop) or “pot” plants in them and never have to worry about watering them. I hydrate them with liquid nutrients designed for hydroponics systems, and then grow tomatoes on my balcony in south Florida. Chemistry, Biology, and Nutrition education all wrapped up in one!
I live up here in Anchorage Alaska.Just started regrowing celery and green onions 3 days ago. Summer days here are approx 15 hrs of sun a day.I live on the third floor and am growing a salad so to speak on a small balcony. Sugar snap peas,leaf lettuce,jellybean tomatoes,and now the regrowing celery and green onion. Big pots and old pallets are the containers.will have herbs growing from the pallets soon.I am very excited!!!! will be a learning experience.
Okay, I’ve tried this 3x now and each time the celery starter rots and turns to mush in the ground, taking down the new growth with it. At first I thought it was too dry, so the next one I kept moist and we got a lot of rain that week. I’m in Houston, so lots of sun even though it’s December, and not too hot. Other than keeping it in the water for 3 weeks instead of the 1-2 days it takes to sprout a good inch or two from the starter, what am I doing wrong???
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so cool, i had no ideas this works – will definitely try with my kids!
Every time I try this the celery base composts in a couple of days and the entire thing dies.
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WOW, who da thunk! Thanks for sharing
Would love to hear how this turned out! I’ve heard conflicting information. Does it work?
It works great! We tried it a few times now and only had one celery stalk not grow. I think it was because it was too wet. It is totally worth trying since you are just going to compost that piece anyway:)
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There’s a celery stalk in our fridge that will now be getting a second chance at life!
I love it Jessica. Let me know how it goes!
What a cool idea. I’ve done this with pineapple, but never considered doing the same with celery. I hope you’ll consider sharing this at Look What We Did, a month long link up hosted by HammockTracks. -Savannah http://www.hammocktracks.com/buttons/
This is so awesome! I heard this method works great with green onions too
Thanks for the tip. We may have to try that next:)
I have tried this with so far perfect results….but now I am wondering how or what is the best way to transfer celery without damaging the plant?
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what kind of soil do you use ?
Thank you!
We just used regular potting soil
Works great with Bok Choy also!
Thanks for the tip. We may have to try that next:)
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