Celery Scrap Gardening

 This post contains Affiliate Links.

      I have heard of scrap gardening, but we never really thought to try it. We bought celery about a month ago, and I kept looking at thinking... What if? What if I put it into a bowl of water? What if I didn't put it in with the scraps to go out to the compost bin? What if I didn't throw it into the food scrap bowl to feed the pig? What if.. What if it grew? 
     So I asked Zoey, "What if?" and she said, "Let's do it!" and guess what it did... 

IT GREW!

And it Grew!

 To the point we thought, "What if... we planted it?"

 Zoey went out to the yard for the good gardening soil. We got out a Terra Cotta pot. She filled it half way with soil. 

She put the celery plant in the pot and then used the rest of the soil to cover up the rest of the plant. 

  Suddenly, our big celery plant, did not look so big. But that is okay, because it grows larger every day.

 We sat our celery plant in the kitchen window where it is nice and sunny, even in winter time. It has already grown bigger since we took this picture. Now we wonder, "What if it grows large enough that we can eat it?" :)

We are working with these onion ends now. Hmmm... What if? 

Want to see what else you can grow from scraps in your kitchen? Check out this article on 25 Foods You Can Re-Grow Yourself Using Kitchen Scraps. 

Have you tried this before? How did it work for you? 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Parts Of A Plant- The Stem

This post contains Affiliate Links.

    If you are going to garden, you need to know about the parts of a plant and their functions. This lesson is on the function of plant stems. 

Celery Stalk Experiment

What you will need:

• 1 stalk of celery, cut diagonally at the bottom
• 1 Tall cup filled half full of water
• Food coloring of your choice (I asked her to choose what color she thought would show up the best against the green of the plant. She chose red)
• Peanut Butter (for a snack later, this is optional :) )

Step 1: Choose your piece of celery for your experiment. Cut diagonally along the bottom. Please supervise your child closely if they are cutting it themselves. 

Step 2: Add enough food coloring into your cup to turn the water a nice dark color. Put the stalk inside the cup, cut side down and the leaf side up.

Step 3:   Allow your celery to sit a while to give the stalk time to soak in and pull the colored water through it's veins. We let ours sit for 2 days to get the maximum absorption. Can you see the red veins in the celery?  

Step 5: Allow your child to dissect their celery stalks and make their own inferences. It is not so appetizing at this point. She really enjoyed taking it apart though, and she was able to see what parts were the veins and how they traveled. 

Step 5: Have a snack! My daughter decided she did not like celery and peanut butter. She got out the ranch dressing and ate hers with it. I, on the other hand, almost took down half a jar of peanut butter with my celery! OOOPS! (If you or someone you are doing this lesson with are allergic to peanut butter, try some cream cheese on it! Do not eat peanut butter if you have a peanut allergy.)

     Now I suppose you are wondering how to make this lesson less preschool/lower grade and more of a higher level of thinking lesson. It's easy! The 'veins' in the celery actually have really cool names and their own functions. Xylem and phloem are the vascular tissues found in celery and other plants that work just like veins do in our bodies. Also in the function of transporting water and nutrients throughout the plant are more scientific terms like: Translocation, Adhesion, Cohesion, Transpiration and Stomata. Now the best way I have found to get children to really understand these terms and functions is to have them look them up themselves. 

Other brainstorming activities: 

• Find other plants you can do this same experiment on like roses and carnations. If you use a white flower, you can change the colors of the petals. 
• Start a 'Scrap Garden' from the end of your celery plant. 

• Draw the end of the celery and label the parts of the stem. 
• If your child does not have one already, start a spiral notebook to be their "Scientific Discoveries" journal. We use ours a lot to journal the progress of our plants and science experiments. It is also a place for her to reflect upon the activities we have done. 

• We also have portfolios that we put our loose papers and work sheets in. She also puts in any good info she finds and prints from the web. My daughter makes her own graphs and charts on MS Excel to go with our lessons. Those graphs go in here after she fills them out during our experiments. Want to know more about using portfolios and notebooks? Click HERE.

• Go to the library and check out books about gardening with kids and parts of a plant. 
• Youtube has a lot of great videos on the subject as well. 

Check out our other 'Parts of a Plant' lessons in this series! 
Parts Of A Plant: Seeds
Parts Of A Plant: Tendrils


(And if I can figure out how to get the worksheets we created to change formats for the different computer, we will post those too! :)

In the meantime, here are some websites that have great information on this topic! (These are NOT affiliate links)

Science Fair Adventure

Biology For Kids

Education.com

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Edible Landscape

This post contains no affiliate links. 

     I've been seeing a lot of posts about 'Grow Gardens, Not Lawns.' This year I decided I would try my hand at it. I have ran into a few problems, but all in all, I am pleased. I chose a couple of beds that were already in my yard and planted herbs and veggies. 

     This one only worked out 1/2 okay. Originally, we planted dill on one side of our peach tree and carrots and spinach on the other. A little gopher/mole type thing decided we had planted it for him, and ate all of the spinach and carrots. (Insert sad face here) He never touched the dill and drowned in a bowl of water about a week later. Too late for our poor carrots and spinach. I can't wait to harvest my dill and then I will try again with the lettuce and spinach for the cooler months. Not sure if I will ever try carrots again though.. I've never had any luck. 

     This is as much of our container gardening/recycle project just as much as edible landscape. I found an old tractor rim with the center cut out at my mom's house that was abandoned by my brother in law. I loved finding it! It was pretty heavy but I managed to get it in the back of my truck all by myself. My daughter and I planted a few sweet onions, lettuce and wild onions in it. Then after the gopher/mole thing ate my other spinach, we planted spinach in it as well. The lettuce has done better here than anywhere else, but the spinach, not too well. There is also a redbud tree growing in it. It is a temporary home till we decide where we want to put it. Might not be too bad there though. 

     In our front yard we have a 'mystery' plant growing! It is a mystery because my seedlings got dumped over and mixed up before they were able to be planted. The leaves and blooms are huge but the fruit is not producing well. The only ones that even started to grow died out before I could tell what they were. I thought it was zucchini but the fruit looked like little round balls. This is the area of the front yard that scored very high in our 'Soil Sample' project. Maybe it just needs some more time. There has also been a lack of bees in our yard this year, even with the flowering privet trees. Could that be why the flowers are not forming fruit? Also in the photo are my little flower pots with cilantro, spinach and lettuce in them. 

     There is another bed around a tree that I started asparagus in but it a new growth and photos do not turn out well. The plant is thin a wispy looking. Hard to see what you are looking at.   

   Well, that concludes my edible landscape. I know it is not much, but its a start. I love this idea along with container gardening. However, I am determined NOT to buy any containers to grow in. Recycle, Reuse, Re-purpose is our motto!  I would love to hear about and see your edible landscape! One day, I hope to have so many containers, my place looks like this :) 

https://www.facebook.com/GrowFoodNotLawns

http://theselfsufficientliving.com/vegetables-that-grow-well-in-a-container-or-pots/

Disclosure: This post contains no affiliate links, however, I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.