How To Grow Celery Successfully With Just Grocery Store Scraps

If you grew up with parents who scolded you about wasting food, you might want to thank them. As we are learning more about the negative impact of leftover food on the environment, it turns out that our parents' comments have some validity (even if their intentions were to get you to eat more). Keeping food scraps — including kitchen trimmings and inedible parts of produce — out of the landfill helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to processing waste and minimize the production of methane caused by rotting food in landfills. 

One easy and fun way to decrease food waste is to grow your own vegetables using kitchen scraps that would otherwise be tossed. Although growing celery in your garden is no easy feat, this vegetable is actually one of the best produce to regrow from scraps. One thing to note: Don't expect your homegrown celery to have the same texture, size, or appearance as its store-bought counterpart — but it will still be edible, tasty, and give you the satisfaction of growing your own food. For the best harvest, we recommend moving your celery plant outdoors once it has gotten a strong start indoors.

To grow celery from kitchen scraps, all you need is one bunch of celery, a clean knife, a narrow jar, and water. Keeping the base of the bunch intact, cut the stalks a few inches from the bottom. Set the stalks aside for a future meal, and place the base in a jar of lukewarm water. Make sure the celery stays upright, with the stalks just above the water line. Set the jar in a sunny spot or under a grow light, and swap out the water each day. Within a few days, roots and new leaves should emerge. The growth will stem from the center while the outer layers die back. (Don't worry, this is normal.) 

If you're growing the celery simply out of curiosity, continue keeping the plant indoors and see how it turns out. But if you're hoping for a more substantial harvest, place it in the ground outdoors once you have at least three developed leaves and a strong root system. Celery plants tend to be susceptible to frost — while needing cool weather and full sun — so wait until daytime temperatures reach 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit and stay above 60 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Celery thrives in well-drained, fertile soil with a pH level of 5.8 to 6.8, so consider testing the dirt before planting. If the results indicate a nutrient deficiency, amend the top few inches of the soil with aged manure, compost, or fertilizer high in potassium, just enough to feed the celery's shallow root system.

As your celery grows, stay vigilant with your watering schedule. Give the plant an inch or two of water each week, making sure the soil is evenly moist. A lack of water or irregular watering could result in stringy, stunted, tough, or deformed produce. Cut off individual stalks once they're at least 8 inches long, but leave the rest of the plant so it can continue producing more stems. For best results, harvest during cool weather, since doing so on a hot and dry day could leave you with bitter and tough stalks. Also, when monitoring your celery plant, keep in mind that darker stems will be tougher and more nutrient-rich than lighter ones. 

Once you've tried growing your own celery, you may get hooked to try more. Try growing other food scraps like pineapples, lettuce, turnips, potatoes, ginger, fennel, garlic cloves, and carrot tops. Then, you can brag to your parents that in addition to not wasting food, you're also eating your vegetables.