I was telling my son that a carrot is a root and celery is a stem while fixing dinner one day last fall and he asked if they would keep growing, the tops of the carrots and the bottom of the celery from the grocery store. I said let's find out and put some carrot tops in a shallow bowl of water after cutting off the "good part" and put the celery heart (crown and bendy/leafy little stalks from the middle) in a glass with some water at the bottom.

After a week or so, there were little hairy roots coming out of the carrots and new leaves. The celery had root nubs beginning to grow around the bottom. So we planted them in the garden. The celery made an attractive plant over the winter and has flowers all over it now. About half of the carrots are still there, little patches of their ferny leaves. Guess we'll get some celery seed, a fairly expensive flavoring I like to use a lot. Not really sure what the carrots have done, haven't dug any up yet to see. Pretty cool stuff tho, fascinating to my son AND me.

Totally free, apparently there's still some benefit to be reaped, and the overall eventual contribution to the compost pile is exponentially increased. And, of course, the important thing, trying to teach my son about food, circle of life, waste not/want not, etc... yada yada...

We also bought 2 sweet potatoes (much earlier in the year) to see what they would do, chose smaller, longer ones just so they would be the easiest to cut in half. Buried the pieces near each other & they grew - a LOT! When the frost killed the foliage, we dug up enough potatoes for several meals. Some were surprisingly far from where the starts had been buried. Well worth the minor effort & a great return on our investment. AND there were pretty morning-glory flowers every morning for a couple months.

What kind of fun veggie experiments has your family done?