Food-from-scraps

I prepare a whole row for come-again crops.
So far this year I have two starts: celery &
romaine lettuce.

Instead of throwing away or composting the bases of store-bought celery, cabbages, leaf lettuces, and other cool-weather crops, you can grow new food. The base must include a root-bearing zone. This is a fun project for kids, because you see results in just a few days.

As, I prepare wide rows for my fall and winter crops, I also prepare a food-from-scraps row. It's usually a fairly narrow row about a foot wide. First, I bury kitchen scraps and compost down the middle of the row and leave a shallow swale on the surface so that water stays in place and soaks into the soil. Then I mulch the row with pine needles. Here's link to my wide-row article for more detail & photos.

So far this year, I have two starts in this row, celery and romaine lettuce. Over the years, I have had the best success with celery, so much so, that I never plant it as a crop from seeds or plants. Cabbage has also been quite reliable and I end up harvesting the come-again cabbage leaves well before my regular cabbage crops mature.

The lettuces

Lettuces: fast, easy-to-grow, cool-weather crops

I planted four types of lettuce in this bed: oakleaf,
black-seeded Simpson, drunken woman, & romaine.

Here in North Florida, we grow our cool-weather crops right through the winter. At the end of September, I planted four types of lettuces in a bed next to the house and also planted a curly parsley row there as well. The lettuces were oakleaf, black-seeded Simpson, drunken woman (which was new for us), and romaine. They all did very well, but the romaine gave us the longest and best harvest. I was remiss in not taking any good photos of this bed while it was in its peak. 

With leaf lettuces, you can harvest the outer leaves as needed or you can cut the plant off just above ground level with the hope that the plant would produce new leaves for a second or maybe a third harvest while the weather is still cool, This works best in Florida with varieties of lettuce that are more tolerant of warm weather or ones that are described as "slow-to-bolt."