Better luck this time

There are a lot things I’ve learned about over the Internet, usable things and things that aren’t. This is one of those rare times it seems to be both.

Back in December, I made cream of celery soup for the first time, and I enjoyed it so much that I called it ”A kitchen triumph”. It’s the next thing I did that’s an example of information I learned on the Internet that was both usable and not usable.

Over the years, I’d seen many memes about how people can take the end of a bunch of celery and grow a plant from it, and this was often included in lists of plants that were the easiest to grow from kitchen cuttings. The photo at the bottom of this post was taken nine days after I made the soup, and, it turned out, that was the high point: Growth stopped after that, and it eventually started rotting.

When that happened, I thought I’d misunderstood the post I read on the Internet, because I planted the cutting in dirt. I decided I shouldn’t have done that, as I put the by rotting thing into the food scraps bin that Hamilton collects to take to a commercial composting facility.

A couple weeks ago, on March 14, I made cream of celery soup again. It wasn’t as good as the first time, mainly because the celery was dark green, and not as sweet as the first time. I also felt this celery was closer to being past its best, so when I took the end and placed it in water, like I did back in December, I wasn’t expecting much. I took the photo at the top of this post today, 13 days after I first put it in water. By that point, the first attempt was already failing.

Since I’d never done this before December, I didn’t know what to expect. The first thing I noticed is that stalks in the centre started to grow, alone with some leaves. The same thing happened this time, too, but it’s still growing and getting bushier.

The site where I learned about this said that doing this doesn’t usually produce celery stalks, and that it was better to think of it more like a herb plant, where leaves can be harvested to use as an ingredient. I never got that far in December—maybe I will this time?

At any rate, it’s just a bit of fun seeing what happens. I’m going to plant out my Vegepod with some herbs and winter crops to see what happens—that, too, is something I’ve never tired before. So far, I’ve had better luck sprouting the celery end this time than back in December. Hope4fully, the good luck will continue with my winter “crops”, too.