the garden: romaine

I'm pretty sure I've made a great new discovery: It looks like you can grow a brand new head of lettuce from the butt of a head that you buy at the grocery store. The technique is identical to what I used in my attempt to grow a new celery stalk from kitchen scraps.

I bought a head of lettuce recently, and I cut the bottom off. I let it sit in water for about a week until new leaves started growing from the middle, like so:

And then I planted the whole thing in a pot, leaving only the new growth exposed.

And it's looking good so far!

And last night, my friend Lily and her boyfriend Zach stayed with us for the night, and we took advantage of the nice weather by grilling out. With a salad on the side. And guess what I did with that lettuce butt? I'm trying to get another one going.

I'll keep you posted on how this experiment goes.

As for the celery, I'm happy to report that it's still alive. I brought it inside for most of the winter and set it in a sunny window. And it was actually thriving, growing shoots like gangbusters. But then I was reasonably sure I saw bugs on the plant, which really freaked me out, so the thing went outside immediately. The cold didn't do it any favors, and a lot of the growth turned brown. But things have turned around in the past few days with the beautiful weather. Here's a shot of the plant yesterday evening, and all of that dark green stuff is brand new. So hopefully things keep going in the right direction.

I also have a bonus celery growing, which I planted earlier this year. It's not thriving yet, but I have not given up hope.