Growing Plants From Food Scraps II: Lemon, Celery & Honeydew Melon!

Posted on by Malin - Sensational Learning with Penguin

Earlier this year, we shared about how we’d started growing a couple of things from food scraps, with inspiration from the wonderful book ‘Linneas Windowsill Garden’. (If you’d like to revisit that post, you can find it here: Growing Plants from Food Scraps! Part I: Pineapple and Avocado) Since then, we’ve planted a few more things from scraps, and it’s now high time for part II in this little series of ours.

Three of the things we’ve planted since our last post, are seeds from lemon and melon, as well as the root end from a shop-bought bunch of celery.

Growing Plants From Food Scraps II: Lemon, Celery & Honeydew Melon!

1. “When life gives you lemons…”

The lemon seeds went into the soil in June, about a week or so after we’d collected them from a lemon. We had four seeds, and they got to share a pot which was then placed on a sunny windowsill. It took about four weeks before anything came up, and I had just about given up on getting any lemon plants when a little bit of green finally poked up through the soil.

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Since then, one of them have developed at a good pace, while two other plants hasn’t done quite as well but are still alive and growing, just not as big and fast as their sibling. The fourth pip never resulted in any growth at all. So from four pips we’ve got three little plants, one of which seems very strong, and two which I think will probably come good if given enough sunlight and nutrients.

2. Celery

In July, we started a little celery plant. We used the remaining larger stalks from a shop-bought bunch in a soup, left a few of the small and  leafy center stalks on the root part of the bunch, and placed that in a glass with some water. It didn’t take long before roots started to form, and before too long it was time to plant it into a pot of soil.

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Our celery plant has continued to do well, but it has shorter stalks and is much more leafy than it’s shop-bought parent. Having read up a little bit on how to grow celery, the main advice is about it needing A LOT of water all the time, and although our plant hasn’t been left to dry out completely at any time, we haven’t exactly been drenching it either. It could also be a good idea to plant it sort of sunk down, like in a trench if you plant it out, or low down in a larger pot. The plant should then grow longer stalks as it reaches up towards the light. This said though, we have used some parts of our celery plant in cooking, and it’s added a nice flavour, so it works well for us in this format too.

3. Honeydew Melon

This one shocked us with how fast it shot up! We collected the seeds from a melon bought on special from Tesco’s, rinsed them off thouroughly and let them dry for about ten days before getting around to planting them.

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After only about 5 days, we already had seedlings!! And they grew so fast, you could almost see them grow. These two pictures were taken with just 24 hours between them!:

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All 12 of the seeds we planted have resulted in healthy looking little plants, and they are now eagerly waiting for us to repot them to give them more space for growing in. Hopefully we’ll be able to provide them with enough light even during the darker months coming up, and maybe we can get a harvest from them when summer comes around again? We’ll have to wait and see. We’ve also got loads more seeds from that same melon, which we haven’t planted yet, so they’ll be available for us to sow in the spring.

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What about the avocado and pineapple from our last post?

Well, there’s good news and bad news, I’m afraid. The first pineapple we attempted rotted, as I already described in the last post, but the second one showed much more promise, with little roots starting to form. Sadly though, rot got that one too! We haven’t tried another one yet, but we will… Might wait until after the wither though, as they’re a plant that likes a good amount of light.

The good news is that we’ve got a lovely avocado plant growing! We did have a couple of failed ones too, where the seeds never sprouted at all. But this one is going strong. We followed the method described in ‘Linneas Windowsill Garden‘, planting the dried out seed in soil, with the top of it sticking up above the surface. Unlike Linnea, we peeled the dried skin off the seed completely before planting it (but whether that’s made any difference is impossible to say), and we haven’t trimmed it at all either. It’s looking so great as it is, I just haven’t had the heart yet. I will have to enlist Penguin to help me, as he’ll likely be more brave and will probably enjoy chopping the top off it.

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If any of you have growing any of the plants mentioned in this post, I’d love to hear about it. Especially if you’ve had more success than us regarding the pineapple! Please share your experiences in the comments. Thank you for reading, and I intend to be back with another blog post tomorrow, as per the Blogtober challenge I mentioned in last night’s post! x

Linking up with:

Blissful Domestication
Keep Calm and Carry On Linking Sunday

 

21 thoughts on “Growing Plants From Food Scraps II: Lemon, Celery & Honeydew Melon!”

  1. I love this! Growing from food scraps is good fun. I haven’t tried celery or lemon but am keen to give them a go now that I’ve read this. I have great success with shallots though and grow these often 🌱

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  2. I am inspired! I love avocados and already have an seed that we kept because we liked it! (Yes, I may be a bit strange!) I have also ordered a copy of that book as it sounds really interesting.

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      1. My book arrived, but I was gutted to find 16 pages missing. The seller refunded me but I am still sad as it looks such a great book.

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    1. Thank you! Yes, lemon trees look so lovely, I hope at least one of our little lemon plants grows into a small tree. So far, so good!
      Hubby actually bought a small greenhouse for almost nothing through fb, and I’m hoping it will be up in our garden before too long (currently it’s sitting in the garage). Best of luck with your plantings, maybe J can find it interesting too even though it’s not about space. Maybe if you relate it to space, like why we have trees, plants etc growing on Earth but not on other planets?? xx

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  5. Love this! I’m going to try growing my own lemon tree next year! and I’m loving your avocado tree. I’ve had quite a bit of success growing garlic from the tiny cloves you tend not to use and would usually discard, just planted direct into the soil in the spring. Thanks for linking up with #KidsandKreativity, really hope to see you back next time

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    1. Oh yes, thank you for reminding me about garlic! I’m planning for us to pop some in a large pot of soil any day now, to leave outside over the winter. From what I’ve heard, garlic grows best if they experience a cold snap, so it’s good to plant them in late autumn. Would prefet to put the in the ground rather than a pot really, but we haven’t got any planting area like that, yet.
      I’ll definitely be joining in again with your linky, I’ve got a post ready and will be along later today if the day goes to plan for me xx

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    1. Thank you! The avocado is still going strong (some leaves looking a little sad, I think that’s mainly due to the time of year). We’ve made another try with pineapple but not been successful yet… Will try again when the weather is warmer, and place it in a sunny spot outside, hoping that might do the trick x

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