Gardening on the Kitchen Counter

With all the stay at home craziness, my family and I are trying our best to not go out more than we have to. This has made having fresh fruits and vegetables challenging. When all this started to go down, we bought a bunch of hearty things like carrots, potatoes, onions, and apples. When properly stored, these will last for months. We also bought others like citrus, lettuce, and berries, but those don't keep too long, so once they're gone, they're gone. Or are they?

In an effort to waste as little as possible during this time, and as a neat little experiment for our family, we've been growing lettuce and celery, from cuttings, on our kitchen counter.

Here you see we have some heads of romaine sitting in a bowl of water. You can see where the initial cut was made, and new growth coming out from the center.

The process couldn't be much simpler. Basically, you keep the root end and place it in some water. Here is some celery in a similar situation. When you cut the stalks off the heart, just don't cut it down quite as far as you otherwise would. Place the root end down in water, with the cut end sticking out. Place it in a sunny spot and wait, changing the water every few days.

It works with green onions, garlic, lettuce, really any kind of vegetable that has a root end that you can save and place in water. I like it because it's making use of something I would normally just compost, and it's growing fresh food for my family in a relatively short timeframe. Granted, it doesn't really scale up, since it takes weeks to get any kind of useful, measurable amount, but it doesn't rely on growing seasons, there is very little risk of loss from garden pests, and you don't have to wait for months like you do when planting a garden outside. So it has some advantages, especially when you're trying not to go to the store.

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