Growing kitchen scraps can seem a little daunting but it is much easier than you think.
We first decided to grow celery after receiving a kitchen waste delivery from Greenhouse Juicery. They deliver all the excess pulp and vegetable scraps to the school for our worm farm, chooks and compost! Celery bases are always plentiful, so we decided to experiment and try and grow new celery from this waste.
Our fist few attempts failed as worms and slater’s ate the whole celery base, leaving us with a rotten mess!
The first season (a year ago), rather than beautiful celery sticks, ours looked more like celery straws, although they tasted perfect. We allowed the plan to go to seed in the hope that we could re-grow from them. Turns out we didn’t need to as the seeds ended up self sowing and lots of new little celery seedlings started to pop up every where.
This season, winter/spring 2016, our celery bases grew into enormous celery stalks and kids were able to harvest, wash and serve as part of Wellness Wednesday where all students recieve fruit/vegetables from Woolworths on a weekly basis.
The kids crunched and munched on the celery, amazed by the fresh flavor, and were so proud of what the had grown from kitchen scraps saved from the compost!
The following week, students were asking for more celery, and the more they spoke of celery, the further the word spread….. All the way to SMOOTH FM RADIO.
As good timing would have it, another delivery of celery bases was received from Greenhouse Juicery and the process has begun once again.
Now that we have mastered the act of regrowing celery, which is plant it, water it, care for it, allow it to grow, let it go to seed and then allow the seeds to re-sow themselves.
Celery will re-grow straight from its base and is edible but if you want to grow good thick crunchy stalks allow it to grow from seed to seedling again.
