Senposai days to harvest

I recorded the number of days from planting a seed until being able to harvest senposai.  I should probably write another post on senposai as its history is fascinating as well as complicated.  For now that will have to wait.  

Senposai is a cross between a European cabbage (Brassica oleracea) and an Asian cabbage called Komatsuna (Brassica rapa).  This means, according to the Triangle of U theory, senposai is considered to be Brassica napus.  See what I mean about Senposai having a complex history?  

I recorded the days to harvest from planting a seed below.  The number of days to harvest listed below are base on how it performed in my garden this year.  I don't give anything perfect conditions, it is just how they perform for me.  It may be a few days more or a few less under different conditions, and it probably grows faster with warmer weather.  Being in Australia, the dates are written day month year.  

Senposai (Brassica napus) days to harvest:  

Seed planted  25/02/2023   Day 0 
Germinated    28/02/2023   Day 3 
Baby leaf       01/04/2023   Day 35 
Harvest          08/04/2023   Day 42 

Senposai

Very few places in Australia sell senposai seeds, and almost nowhere sells leaves for eating.  This is unfortunate because senposai is fast growing, nutritious, easy to grow, and rather productive over a decent amount of time.  

Like virtually all brassicas, bees and other beneficial insects like its flowers.  Senposai is also easy to save seed from, and the senposai I grow is a stable variety that mostly breeds to to type.  

Tokyo Bekana on left, Senposai on right

Senposai can be eaten raw or cooked.  I dare say it could be fermented like most other cabbages, but I am yet to try that.  People also eat senposai flowers and flower stalks, I have not tried them yet.  

Poultry love to eat senposai leaves, as do our guinea pigs.  I probably wouldn't feed too much of this to a guinea pig as they can be a little sensitive to eating large amounts of brassicas.  Chickens on the other hand can eat as much senposai as I can give them.  

Unfortunately I can't find any reliable information on the level of crude protein or iron or anything like that.  Given its parentage, it is safe to assume that like most brassicas it would be highly nutritious.  

Senposai - ignore the holes

I grow everything organically.  You will notice the many holes in the leaves in my photos.  The holes were made by caterpillars that did some damage before I noticed them and fed them to my chickens.  The leaves still taste the same, the holes don't make a great deal of difference.  

Given that senposai only takes a month an a half to reach harvestable size, and it survives rather harsh conditions, and how it crops for a long time, I think I will grow more senposai.  I will probably need to save seed myself because so few places offer it in Australia. 

For a list of days to harvest for many vegetables and herbs, please click here.    

Immali corn 2023

Immali Corn is a pink/purple and white sweetcorn.  This is the first purple sweet corn developed in Australia.  For some reason we don't have many coloured sweet corns in Australia.  I bred Immali corn myself, so am biased, but I really like it.  

Immali corn is a short variety, which tillers (ie grows several stalks per plant which increases the number of cobs).  It is very sweet, and higher in antioxidants than yellow corn.  

It needs to be cooked not long after it is picked, otherwise it starts converting sugars to starch.  This means it tastes far better.  It is a great variety for backyards, and entirely unsuitable to mechanical harvest and interstate transport.  

This year I didn't grow many Immali corn plants, and didn't get to eat any.  Instead I saved all the cobs for seed.  This year, due to the weather and the soil, the cobs were smaller than usual and less were produced per plant than usual.  That is ok, they are still large enough and numerous enough.  I will fix up the soil over winter and next year's crops of all my vegetables will hopefully be back to normal.

Some interesting things happened this year in the cobs that I thought I would share.

Immali corn cobs drying

Some cobs were mostly white, with just a few coloured seeds.  When picked at the milk stage (ready to eat as sweet corn) they are white with a few blue or purple kernels.  

This is what I was aiming for when I first started to breed Immali corn.  I then decided that a higher percentage of purple was better (there are vastly more antioxidants in purple corn), so pushed the variety to have more purple.  I don't see many of these mostly white cobs.  They sure are pretty.

Immali corn - small cobs this year

Immali corn - lots of white

Some plants produced entirely purple cobs.  The colour genetics behind this is relatively simple, but I alternate white seeds and purple seeds when planting, so tend to only see cobs with a mix of white and purple.  

Finding some entirely purple cobs like this was fun and unexpected. 

Immali corn - some cobs entirely purple

Most plants produced the regular looking "Immali corn" cobs.  They have mostly purple seeds and some white seeds.  

When picked at the milk stage, the colours are lighter, and they look pink/purple and white.  It really is very pretty for a sweet corn.  When you let the cobs age and dry the colours change to darker purple like in these photos.

Immali corn ready for shucking

Immali corn - dry seeds

I started breeding Immali Corn about a dozen years ago, and it is now a stable and beautiful variety.  I have only ever grown it organically so it has adapted to become relatively resistant to pests and productive under less than ideal conditions.  One thing I love about Immali corn is that you can save seed each year and grow it again and again without ever having to buy seed a second time.

Sweet corn seed only lasts a year or two before germination drops off.  I now have plenty of fresh seeds.  If you would like to buy seeds of organically grown Immali Corn, I sell them through my for sale page.  

Micro farming with tiny vegetables

I grow a lot of different vegetables, herbs, berries, and other fun things.  I grow a lot of perennial vegetables, and also some annuals and biennials.  

I have done a little breeding and produced some really enormous plants. 

Massive vegetables are great if you have the space and have a large family to feed, but are not worth growing if you only have a balcony or a windowsill to grow your plants.  If you have a small family, live on your own or only live with your partner, then smaller vegetables may be more suitable for you to grow.  

I have also done some breeding of smaller vegetable plants such as Igloo tomato, Nanuq tomato, Immali corn, Oaken tomato, Tracey Tomato.  Immali corn reaches about 5 feet tall, the tomatoes reach about one to two foot tall.  While these are nowhere near the monstrous sizes that other varieties can reach, they are also not tiny.

I can also see the point of growing tiny vegetables (as well as breeding enormous vegetables, and smaller vegetables) so I have also started dabbling in breeding micro vegetables.  Micro vegetables are nutritious and adorable, plus they take next to no room to grow.  Micro vegetables won't feed your family, but they can be the difference between growing some food, or growing nothing.

Hedou bok choy and Micro Tom tomato

Tiny micro dwarf vegetables are fun to grow.  They take up next to no room, they produce nutritious wholesome organic food, they are ridiculously cute, they go from seed to harvest in a very small amount of time, and you can grow several crops each year.  Being tiny means that you harvest what you will eat fresh that day, no need to store anything and no waste.

Micro vegetables can be grown by urban farmers with nothing more than a sunny window sill, some water, and a pot of dirt.  If you can't find a pot, then cut off the base of a milk bottle, or use a yoghurt container, be creative!  If it can hold soil, and has drainage holes, then it will probably work for micro vegetables.

Below are some photos of Micro Tom tomato, and Hedou Bok Choy.  These are the tiniest varieties of each of these vegetables.  

Micro Vegetables - nutritious, fast growing, and cute

Hedou Bok Choy is adorable.  It is tiny and cute and makes Baby Bok Choy look enormous.  The ones in the photos are growing in a 10cm pot.  

This is the size that these are normally harvested, but I am keeping these particular plants for seed saving.  As you can see, they take up next to no room, could easily be grown under taller vegetables or other plants, and you harvest exactly as many as you plan to eat in that meal - making them super fresh.

There were five plants in that tiny pot, but one was culled as it did not meet my strict seed saving requirements.  Five plants easily fit in such a tiny pot, I have a feeling I could have put in even more and they would have grown just as well.  

Hedou Bok Choy - several plants in 10cm pot

I have a seedling tray that was partly empty.  Instead of having unused soil with nothing growing in it, I decided to plant out some Hedou bok choy.  

In an area that was 25cm by 20cm I planted 30 Hedou bok choy plants.  Six rows of five plants spaced relatively evenly apart.  

Hedou Micro Bok Choy almost ready to harvest

Hedou Bok Choy Flowering

These could have been planted slightly closer if I wanted and they would have still thrived.  That's the beauty of micro vegetables, they can be grown in impossibly small spaces and still produce fresh food.

They do need some depth of soil for root space.  The Hedou Bok Choy that is in the small pot would have a depth of under 10cm for roots, this seems to be ample.  You may notice that the plants in this pot have larger leaves.

The thirty plants were in a seed raising tray with about 3 or 4cm depth for roots, that did not seem enough and the plants bolted to flower pretty quickly.  This early bolting may have been caused by the heat and fluctuating weather, but I suspect if they had a deeper pot they would have held off a little longer.  

Early bolting is not the end of the world, I ate some of these plants, and kept the best ones to produce seed.  You can eat the flower stems of bok choy, there are even some varieties that have been bred for that exact purpose.

Micro Tom tomatoes ripening

Micro Tom plants flowering and fruiting

Micro Tom is the smallest tomato variety ever produced.  They don't produce the smallest fruit, they produce the smallest plants.  

The plants below have grown under shade in my greenhouse and are much taller than normal.  When grown in direct sun sometimes they barely reach 2 inches tall. 

Micro Tom getting tall under low light

My micro tom plants have grown to heights of between 4cm and 9cm tall.  I have grown them in pots, as well as in the garden, and have never had a plant reach 10 cm tall yet.  They are tiny.

Micro Tom tomato fruiting

The plants in the photos below are about 2cm tall (just under an inch) and already producing flower buds!  

Usually I get about ten small red round tomatoes per Micro Tom plant.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but the average for a well grown plant is ten fruits.

Micro Tom flowering at one inch tall

The plants are growing in the bottom of a milk bottle which measures10cm x 10cm.  There are only 4 plants in there as I planted 5 seeds and only 4 germinated.  Once again I think more could have easily put more plants in without it bothering them at all.  

There are not many varieties of micro dwarf tomatoes in Australia.  I currently grow Micro Tom, Florida Petite, Micro Venus, and am attempting to breed some woolly leaf micro tomatoes of various different colours.  

Venus micro tomato

Micro Venus tomato 

Micro Tom is always under 10cm tall, the other micro tomato plants usually reach 10-15cm tall.  This is tiny when you consider that most dwarf tomato plants usually reach about 4 feet tall.

The genetics behind micro tomatoes is fascinating if you are breeding new varieties, but to everyone else can be a bit of a dry topic so I won't discuss it here.  

There are a few varieties of tiny herbs around too, but most of those get surprisingly big.  If you have limited space, but still want to grow a little something to eat why not try tiny vegetables.  There are plenty of different ones out there, not just the two I mentioned.  

There is a good chance I will have seeds of these for sale at different times.  I grow everything, including these micro vegetables, organically.  When I do have extra seeds I will try to list them on my for sale page.

Micro Tom plants fruiting

Bok choy gets some colour under high light

Window sill farming at its best!

Micro bok choy

Semi Aquatic Vegetables

A few years ago we bought a 'self watering' pot.  I put a nice fern in it.  After a short while I needed to transplant the fern into something else as it started to die.

Unlike other self watering pots that we have which work perfectly, this one was poorly designed and does not work.  The soil gets all swampy and wet, which rots and kills most plants.  There is no little gap for air/drainage, and is essentially a pot with no drainage.

Instead of throwing away this pot, I decided to try and grow some water loving herbs and vegetables.  Perhaps they would like to grow in this pot.

I have some things such as Vietnamese coriander, water celery, fish mint, and various types of mint that I know would do well in here.  I also suspect that water chestnuts would do well in there.  I didn't want to grow any of these as they are doing so well under other conditions.

I also have a few other edible plants that do ok where I currently grow them, but I think may thrive in this pot.  Hopefully I will stumble across a better way to grow these plants.  

I decided to try willowherb (Epilobium parviflorum), Watercress (Nasturtium officinale), Gotu Kola (Centella asiatica), Brahmi (Bacopa monnieri), and Kangkong (Ipomoea aquatica).  All of these plants are known for loving water and growing on the edge of ponds or even growing submerged with their leaves out of the water.  I hope one or more of these will be well suited to this bog garden life.

Other than kangkong which were transplanted seedlings, all the others were cutting grown.  The first photos were taken 23 December.  Everything is looking limp after being transplanted the previous day.

Willowherb, Watercress, Gotu kola, Brahmi, and Kangkong

Everything was pretty small

The next photos were taken 04 January.  In under two weeks the plants have grown very fast!  

The willowherb is slowly growing, and the Gotu Kola hasn't done a great deal yet.  You can't really tell from the photo but the Brahmi has done a lot of growing over the two weeks.  Both Watercress and Kang Kong appear to be loving this new pot and their growth is rocketing along.

Less then two weeks of growth

Willowherb, Watercress, Gotu kola, Brahmi, and Kangkong

For soil I just used what I cleaned out of a drain that is in front of the garage.  It is mostly made up of soil and leaf litter that has been broken into small pieces.  This soil has weed seeds in it so I remove grass etc as it germinates.  Other than that it seems ideal for this purpose.  It holds water well, seems pretty fertile, and has plenty of organic matter that will break down to release further nutrients over time.

I am growing this little pot of herbs and vegetables in my greenhouse.  It is pretty warm in there over summer but also has some shade from the sun.  

The photos below were taken 13 January after three weeks of growth.  

The water cress is the standout and is growing like mad, it is flowering, and spilling over the sides of the pot.  Before I took these photos I had already been removing some of the watercress.  

The kangkong seems to be growing well and has large fat leaves but not much stem length.  Hopefully I get to eat some kangkong this year as well as grow the plants large enough to over winter in the greenhouse.

Brahmi seems to be growing well and has almost covered the surface of the soil.  I'm surprised that it is not flowering yet.  I quite like brahmi but it doesn't grow fast enough for my liking.

Willowherb is getting longer leaves and is larger overall.  This plant seems to be dividing, which is what I was hoping for.  

Gotu kola seems to have disappeared.  I think the runner I used was too tiny and may not have had enough roots, so I may put in another plant to see how it goes.    

Three weeks of growth

Kangkong growing larger, water cress spilling over the sides

Watercress flowering

After seven weeks I took the pictures below.  

Kangkong is looking healthy and getting bigger, but growing far slower than I would like.  I had hoped that my kangkong would be large enough to harvest by now, but it isn't.  I can pick a few leaves here and there, but not enough.  If it is going to have any chance of survival the kangkong will need to get larger before winter.

The watercress is spilling over the sides, flowering, and dropping seed.  I have allowed some of the seed to drop into the pot.  I have also harvested some of the watercress.  Water cress seems to be well suited to life in this pot.

Gotu Kola is in there, and appears to be alive, but isn't doing a great deal of anything.  I really should have tried this using a larger plant with more established root system.

The brahmi is in there, and flowering, but it is not all that huge and its growth is not at all rampant.  I have a feeling that brahmi needs a little more shade than this pot is getting.

The willow herb is getting big.  It has grown a bit of a stem and is reaching over the side of the pot, it now has long leaves, and appears to be dividing.  I think willowherb is well suited to life in this pot.

After seven weeks

Willow herb on left, kangkong on right 

This pot constantly has wet soil and there is water in the reservoir.  Unlike good self-watering pots this one has no space for air/drainage, so it functions more like a pot with no drainage hole.  If plants work well in here I can replicate the setup by getting a pot of soil and putting it in an ice cream container or something with a little water in it.

From this early progress it appears that some of these plants should flourish in this pot.  Hopefully this proves true over the longer term and is not just things doing well in the short term.  

From here I plan to keep it growing, harvest what I want, and see what survives winter.  

Hedou Tiny Bok Choy days to maturity

Bok choy (Brassica rapa) is known for being a fast growing and nutritious vegetable.  Most bok choy varieties are relatively small and good for balcony farming.  This year I am growing a tiny extra dwarf bok choy variety called 'Hedou'.  

From all accounts, bok choy is a highly nutritious vegetable, very fast growing, and being extra compact in size makes Hedou bok choy super cutie.  All of this makes Hedou Bok Choi perfect for urban farmers and gardeners with limited space.  Being so cute and fast to grow also make it easy to get kids involved in gardening.  

Hedou Bok Choy

I grew some Bok Choy in pots for seed saving

The Hedou variety of micro Bok Choy seems to have some internet hype, yet very little actual information can be found anywhere on the internet.  There are a few pictures here and there, and a few places selling seed, but that is about all.

I grew some of these in the veggie garden between other vegetables where they took up next to no space.  Brassicas tend to cross pollinate like mad, so I grew some in small pots in my greenhouse for saving seed.  

As there is so little information around I decided it would be good if I recorded my progress to give an idea of what to expect when growing Hedou tiny bok choy.  The first time I soaked seed overnight, the second planting I didn't, I have recorded both below. 

Being in Australia, dates are written Day/Month/Year.

Hedou Dwarf Bok Choy 

Hedou Bok Choy gets some petiole/stem colour with high light

Days to maturity Hedou Bok Choy (Brassica rapa)

Seeds soaked       18/11/2022      Day -1
Seeds planted       19/11/2022     Day 0
Germinating         22/11/2022     Day 3
Heads forming     10/12/2022     Day 21   
Flowering            24/12/2022     Day 34    
Seeds ripe            25/01/2023     Day 67

I also planted some Hedou Bok Choy without soaking them first:  

Seeds planted     17/12/2022      Day 0
Germinated        20/12/2022      Day 3
Harvest from      13/01/2023      Day 27  (Note: most bolted to flower)
Flowering           16/01/2023      Day 30

On the face of it, three or four weeks seems like an absurdly short amount of time from planting the seed to harvest, especially when you consider that many other vegetables take 10 or so days to simply germinate. When I look at how small these plants are, and how quickly they germinated, it makes sense.  

To be clear, they won't always take three weeks, they may take four or five under harsher conditions, but this is still very fast.  

If conditions are bad (too hot, inconsistent watering, too cold etc) they may bolt to seed early.  The heat hit so my second lot bolted to flower.  If this happens you can harvest and eat them before they send up a flower stalk.  They still taste the same.  If you let the flower stalk get too tall they get a bit tough and stringy.  Once they have reached this point you can just allow them to flower and set seed.  Hedou is a stable heirloom variety that will breed true to type.  If your neighbour has any form of Brassica rapa flowering they will probably cross, any F1 seedlings will still be edible.  

Hedou Bok Choy grow fast, and are small at full size.  Most people eat several of these in a meal, meaning you harvest what you eat and you eat what you harvest - there is never any waste, and never anything to store.  You can also grow an awful lot of plants in a tiny space, so their small size can be an advantage.  

Hedou Bok Choy Flowering 

Hedou Bok Choy happily grows in a small pot of soil meaning it can be easily grown with no land and easily tended by children or the elderly.  This would be a great vegetable to grow in a school kitchen garden as the time from seed to harvest is so short.  

I think succession planting is key, each time you harvest some you plant some more seeds, and it does not take long to get into a rhythm that ensures a constant supply of this tiny yet nutritious vegetable.  Or if you had the space you could grow a patch of them and allow a few to self seed.  

One thing that surprised me was the short time it took Hedou Bok Choy to produce seed.  From planting a seed, until harvesting its seeds, was around ten weeks.  I am sure this could be less under different conditions.  This timing sounds pretty perfect for a school science project.  

Having such short generational time also makes me wonder if I should start a breeding project with it myself.  But that will have to wait.  For now I am happy growing it, eating it, and saving its seed.  There appear to be very few places in Australia selling Hedou Bok Choy seed.  At the moment I am saving seed to grow myself, once I have saved enough seed I will list it on my for sale page.

I have a blog post with days to maturity that includes a long list of vegetables and berries etc where I have recorded the number of days from planting a seed until harvesting the first crop. 

Black Nebula carrot flowering

I like dark purple carrots.  Unfortunately there are few varieties of purple carrots in Australia, and  many of the purple carrots have lovely purple skin, and a disapointingly orange core.  

I had started a breeding project to develop carrots that were purple all the way through, then I found Black Nebula carrots.  

Black Nebula carrots are great.  They are purple/black all the way through with only a few areas of lighter colour.  They taste almost like a cross between beetroot and carrot, which I quite like.  They also grew well for me.  

I grow everything organically in my garden.  Generally speaking, pollinator insects seem to like carrot flowers.  Honey bees never seem overly interested in Apiaceae flowers, but there are many other pollinator insects and other beneficial insects that seem to enjoy them.  

Black Nebula carrots are a stable variety of carrot so seed can be collected from them and will grow true to type.  They (like any/every vegetable variety that I can access) are not Genetically Modified.  

I am told that, unlike many modern varieties of carrot, Black Nebula carrots do not have the genes for cytoplasmic male sterility.  This is a great thing for the home garden as it means they can easily be open pollinated and makes seed saving reasonably simple.

Black Nebula Carrot Flowers

I had cut off the tops of the carrots we ate and was going to grow the carrot tops to produce seed.  Unfortunately after a mishap the tops all died.  

I still had some black nebula carrots growing in the garden that I was planning to eat.  Instead of eating them I have let them all flower and hope to collect their seed.  

Strangely enough, even though 'Black Nebula' is a stable carrot variety, they do display some genetic diversity.  Genetic diversity is a good thing, especially in carrots!    

Organic black nebula carrots are dark purple

All of the black nebula carrot roots were dark purple, all had varying amounts of white.  I believe the white to be environmentally induced rather than genetic.  All of the roots were similar length, shape, and thickness.  Strangely enough the genetic diversity could only be seen in the flowers.  

Some of the black nebula flowers were almost white with a very faint purple tinge that you can't see in my photos.  

white/light purple carrot flowers 

Black nebula carrot flowers

Others black nebula carrot flowers were various shades of purple.  Some light, others darker, and some had a patch of flowers in the centre that were darker purple.

Black nebula carrot flowers

I may only collect seeds from the darker flowered plants.  Or I may collect seed from all of them.  I am not sure at this stage what I will do.

Genetic diversity is a good thing, even in a stable (inbred) line like this.  It allows me to apply selective pressure and have some genetic drift.  This enables me to make this variety more suitable to my climate and more able to withstand the pests that it will encounter in my garden.

Carrots are also known for suffering from inbreeding depression, so I want some genetic diversity in my plants.

As I want at least some genetic diversity I am allowing all of these plants to flower and have a chance of their pollen being used for the next generation.  This will increase genetic diversity in my seeds.  

I also  want the highest anthocyanin line possible, and I am unsure if flower colour has any linkage to root anthocyanin levels.  Perhaps when I learn more about carrot genetics I will rogue out some plants in favour of others, until then I will just try to keep the darkest ones.

Various black nebula carrot flowers

If all goes to plan my plants should produce copious amounts of seed with a reasonable amount of genetic diversity.  Once this is ripe I will collect some to plant and some to save for the following year.  

Carrots generally produce a lot of seed so I should have some extra black nebula carrot seed at some stage.  Once I have some fresh seed I will list it on my for sale page.  

Variegated water parsley Oenanthe javanica (flamingo)

Variegated water parsley Oenanthe javanica (flamingo), is also called water celery, water parsley, Java water dropwort, Japanese parsley, Chinese celery, rainbow water parsley, minari (미나리), and has a bunch of other common names.  

Variegated water celery is a perennial vegetable or perennial herb that is very simple to grow and very productive.  I am told that this perennial  vegetable has a native range that extends between Siberia, Tropical and Subtropical Asia, India, Papua New Guinea, and some of the northern parts of Australia.  

Strangely this plant appears to be distributed across a lot of tropical places, yet survives harsh frosts with no issues whatsoever.  I think any plant that is native to tropical Asia as well as Siberia to be rather perplexing.  It also means that this plant is likely to survive anywhere as long as there is enough water and sunlight.  

As this plant can survive and even thrive across such a wide environmental range, and given how productive it is, I don't understand why it is so uncommonly grown.

Variegated water parsley

I wrote another blog post on this plant back in 2017 and had already been growing it for a few years at that stage.  I still have the same plants, they continue to thrive with less than ideal conditions and a lot of neglect.  I had wanted the all green form as I am told it grows more aggressively, but I only have the far prettier variegated one.  

I have been growing variegated water parsley for a few years, and it has to be one of the easiest of edible plants to grow.  Even the 'weaker' variegated form grows like mad in my garden.  Even though it is very productive we don't tend to eat much of this plant, I do feed it to our animals and enjoy how ornamental it looks.

Variegated water parsley leaves

Water celery plants love water so much that they can grow with roots submerged and leaves above water.  I have grown some like this in a bucket of mud for several years and they look great and perform well with no care from me other than topping up the water from time to time.  I also grow some on a pot of water that is floating in my goldfish barrel, it seems to perform well in these conditions too.

They can also be grown in regular garden soil with regular watering.  They don't appear to die if grown in drier soils, but also don't perform their best without watering.  They are rather vigorous and forgiving of less than ideal conditions.

Variegated water celery loves to spread

Variegated water celery flowers but I have not yet been able to grow any seedlings.  Unfortunately I tend to loose track of the flowers and have never found out if they can produce fertile seed.

I find that the plant grows some underground rhizomes and divides a bit in this way.  

This plant also throws above ground runners similar to what strawberry plants do, and it divides quickly in this way.  Last year I grew some in little pots to sell at a garage sale, and they grew runners that spread into all the nearby pots of other plants.

They can handle full sun, but seem to do better with a little shade.  If they are in too deep shade the leaves get stretched and it throws runners in search of sun.  I assume the all green form can handle more shade than the variegated form.

Variegated water celery leaves

Water celery tastes and smells a lot like weak celery, and a little like parsley.  It is not the strongest flavour, and it gets weaker with cooking.  It can be eaten raw, or added at the end of cooking.  

As well as being edible by people, animals can also eat this plant.  Chickens, guinea pigs, ducks etc all seem to enjoy eating the leaves.  Given how nutritious this plant is, and how quickly it can grow, this is a good thing.

The leaves and stems of this edible herb are various amounts of green, white, pink, and are pretty all year.  In cooler weather, or while the plant is under any stress, they tend to get a lot more of the pink colouration.  Sometimes the leaves go a bit purple, this is usually an indication of stress.  Harsh frosts can cause this purple colouration.  It doesn't seem to change the taste, so is not a problem.

I planted one small plant in each of the pots below, each of them has divided quickly into multiple plants and also sent out a few runners.  It is difficult to see in the photos below, but most of them have also grown out of the drainage holes.  This plant likes to survive!

I sell bare rooted plants of variegated water celery through my for sale page.  I don't expect to ever run out of this plant, ever, so if it is not listed on my page feel free to ask me about it.