How to Grow Carrots From Tops

I remember when I was a child reading in a book and hearing that you could cut the top off a carrot, put it in some water (they always went into great detail about how to do this specifically saying the depth of water and the exact length of carrot root) and it would regrow a delicious edible carrot root.  As a child I never believed it.

Now that I am older I have head some distinguished permaculture people, as well as some highly regarded garden writers, claim that you can grow permanent beds of carrot roots by replanting the tops.  I still didn't believe it, so I tested it with my kids.  I also grew a few other things too. 

My thoughts were that the leafy tops would grow but the root would not, or if it did grow it would be forked and worthless.  I dislike eating carrot leaves, so for me this would be a pointless endeavor. Transplanting carrots is never encouraged because if you damage the tap root the resultant crop is often misshapen or forked.  Cutting the mature root and ending up with a decent yield sounded like yet another garden myth to me.

Regrowing Carrots from Tops - it is possible
I have searched the internet and found many references to regrowing carrots from the discarded tops.  Yet I have seen no pictures to back up the claims.  I have seen a few pictures that shows you can grow carrot leaves in this way, some show flowers, but no pictures of the roots.  I have also read some detailed descriptions of people who do this, but they all refer to growing and eating the leaves or allowing it to flower and collecting seed.  I dislike eating carrot leaves, and the tops can easily be used by feeding to animals or composting, so this does not interest me.

When I grew them the leaves regrew nicely and the root grew some thin side roots, this made me optimistic that perhaps I had been wrong all this time and this could work.  Then the carrot started to flower and died.  The root did not elongate at all, and it rotted away.  I have tried removing the flower stalk and they grew more leaves, but the roots didn't grow thick and edible.  I have tried a few times now, always with the same result, the tap root did not grow long or thick.  Not once.

While this is far from definitive proof I saw enough to be convinced that it is unlikely to regrow carrots from tops.  I believe that you can grow more carrot leaves, you can certainly get carrot flowers and seeds, but I am still convinced that if any thick roots ever grew they would be forked and misshapen.  Growing carrots from seed seems to be far simpler and more cost effective than using the discarded top.

If am am jumping to conclusions here and you have tried this yourself and can prove me wrong then please let me know!  I am happy to be proven wrong on this.

Regrowing Carrot Tops - didn't work for me

Regrowing Carrot Tops

Edit to add: I was wrong!  It turns out that it IS possible to grow carrots from a discarded top.  I have seen proof.

Cyndi commented below, sent me photos, and was even kind enough to allow me to put them on my blog! 

Thank you Cyndi, I certainly learned something today (I love it when I learn new things).

Growing a carrot from tops - IT IS POSSIBLE!!!

Regrowing Celery from discarded bottom
Another thing I have heard about was regrowing celery from the discarded base.  To me this made sense, it is just leaves growing so should be achievable.  Again I searched on the internet, then tried it with my kids.

I grew a few discarded celery bases, some were larger than others.  At first they all grew more leaves, as the stems and young leaves are the main crop here this already proved to have worked.  They all grew roots.  I planted some in the garden, others I kept in the water.

Eventually some grew into normal looking reasonably tall plants, others flowered set seed and died.  The ones planted into soil grew far better than the ones that were not planted in soil.  It was not difficult to get a second crop out of each of them, even if it was far smaller than the first.

Regrowing celery from discarded bases - easy

Celery with hover fly

Celery starting to flower

Growing other crops from discarded parts
We also had some other things such as pak choi and bok choi and a few similar leaf crop brassicas.  Much like the celery I figured they should work as the leaves are the main crop.

Again they all grew leaves fast enough, they grew roots and I planted some.  The planted ones did better than the ones left in water.  Much like the celery this gave us more crops from the same plant.  They were smaller than the initial crop, but that is ok as it cost nothing other than a little water and space.

Some of them grew into multiple plants and were able to be divided and replanted.  Others did not.  Eventually they all flowered and died.  It would have been simple to save seed had I wanted to.

Again, for a leaf crop, it was relatively simple to regrow these.  I don't know if I will bother again as growing from seed is so simple and they produce many thousands of seeds.  The bases can be fed to my animals or composted so are not wasted.

Growing vegetables from discarded bases

I tried the same thing with beetroot.  Much like the carrots the leaves grew well for me, but the root stubbornly refused to grow.  Unlike carrot I like to eat beetroot leaves, they are essentially the same as silverbeet but are smaller and sweeter, so this was not a huge waste.  I really don't think I will bother doing this again unless I am wanting to save seed as the space needed to grow a discarded beetroot top just for leaves is much the same as the space required to grow a beetroot for root and leaves.  Again, I can compost these discarded parts so nothing goes to waste.

John 6:12 When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.”

Purple stripey Basil

Last summer I grew a heap of different basil (Ocimum basilicum) varieties.  They ranged in leaf shape and size, they ranged in taste, they varied in productivity.  A comparison of those basil varieties can be found here.

By far the prettiest variety of basil that I grew was an unnamed striped purple basil that I have been working on for a few years.

Unnamed purple stripey basil, looks nicer in real life

The stems and backs of the leaves are dark purple (the colour in the pictures does not do them justice) the top of each leaf was green with purple veins giving it a striking appearance.  Again, the pictures don't do it justice, the colours in real life were darker and more vivid.  It had purple/pink flowers and dark stems. 

The taste was not as sweet as I would like, but it held up to cooking far better than genovese basil which makes it rather useful.  The leaves were a bit smaller than I would like, but they look amazing and they grow enough leaves that it makes up for them being a bit small.

I plan to grow this variety again this year, I think it is now a stable strain.  If it is stable it will need a name.

Pink/Purple basil flowers, dark stems

Like all basil they grow well as cuttings

Some higher leaves were less striped when the plants began to flower

Dark stems, purple striped leaves, very ornamental (and edible) basil

One of my plants, tall and narrow

Plants get tall and narrow if not pinched and made to branch

Top of leaf green with dark purple stripes

Dark purple stems and backs of leaves

Same plant, same chopping board, same day, but the lighting was somehow different

Fake Blue Banana Seeds

More ebay thieves selling fake seeds, this time they are selling banana seeds.  These are not my pictures.  Below are a bunch of pictures that I found on actual ebay listings, not one of these things exists.  The ebay thieves make thousands of dollars from selling seeds that do not exist, they post seeds to the buyer, and by the time you have worked out that something is wrong it is too late to get your money back.

Blue Bananas
Blue bananas don't exist.  There are heaps of pictures of them on the internet, someone has taken a picture and digitally changes the colour.  There are some varieties where the unripe bananas are green/blue, but no vibrant blue varieties.  Please never buy anything from anyone who sells blue banana seeds as they are thieves and won't give you what you paid for.

Blue banana do NOT exist

Bonsai Bananas
How cute do bonsai banana plants look!  Being tiny means even in a cool climate I could grow them as I could protect them and keep them somewhere warm.  Unfortunately bonsai bananas do NOT exist.  These plants are not real, the picture is of a pretend plant.  It is not alive, it is fake.  Please never fund these ebay thieves, never buy anything that they are selling if they sell bonsai banana seeds.

bonsai banana does NOT exist

Giant bananas
Seriously, people bought fake ebay seeds for these?  I am tempted to say something nasty about the type of person who would be taken in by this kind of lie.  Bananas don't have the genetic potential to ever reach this size, I don't see why anyone would think that they do.  Even with GM technology bananas will NEVER get this big

Giant banana do NOT exist and will NEVER exist

Various coloured bananas
These ebay thieves are not even trying, they got one picture of bananas and have changed its colours digitally.  Other than the unripe green none of these colours exist, please DON'T buy seeds for these!

Multicolour banana - same picture recoloured

Banana melons
At first this add made me wonder if it was an ebay thief, or just a confused seller.  I read through the listing and found they were the former.  This is a picture of a yellow zucchini, nothing terribly rare.  The description talks about sweet melons.  Zucchini are far from sweet, if anything they are very bland.  This seller is selling seeds of several other things that don't exist, which helps show what type of person they are.

People sometimes assume ebay seed thieves are located in China, but there is no reason that they are not from any other country, including ours!  Just because these thieves are located in Australia, and they will send you seeds quickly, it doesn't mean that they are not trying to steal from you.  When you leave your house you lock it to keep the thieves out, so you understand that there are thieves in our country too.

Banana melon?  This is actually just a normal zucchini

Photoshopped coloured Bananas
No surprises here, they have done a dodgy job of changing the colours and are selling seeds of bananas that don't exist.  If anyone is selling any seeds that don't exist please never buy anything from them.

As pointed out in a comment below, pink bananas DO exist.  Musa velutina grows pink skinned bananas that look amazing.  The pink in the picture below has been altered digitally.  Do some research and be certain that what you are buying is a real colour and was not photoshopped.

Blue bananas don't exist, and this pink was photoshopped

Rainbow bananas
It is very rare (but certainly not impossible) for anything to have multiple coloured fruit on the same plant.  Sure some chillies do it, but not bananas.  I have never seen that blue on any fruit or vegetable.  These ebay thieves have changed the colours, these bananas look amazing, but they don't exist.  Please don't buy anything from these ebay thieves.

Rainbow bananas do NOT exist

Ebay thieves everywhere
I have written several other posts on ebay seeds that don't exist.  The more I look on ebay the more seeds I see listed for sale (by local and premium members with 99% or higher ratings) that don't exist.  Just because seeds are cheap, and they have free postage, and that the seller has a great rating, doesn't mean that they are selling you something that even exists, please do some research before buying any seeds from ebay.

All of my posts on fake ebay seeds have been labelled "Things that don't exist" to make them easier to find.

Cape Gooseberry Yield per Plant

I have heard many different reports on how productive Cape Gooseberries (Physalis peruviana) are.  These range from "up to 100 fruits per plant" which seems incredibly low, to "over 2kg per plant" which sounds like an exaggeration.  I have also heard anecdotal reports of them cropping "a cup per day all season" which sounds similar to the 'my chicken lays one egg a day every single day' nonsense.

My Cape gooseberry fruit started ripening 14/01/2017.  At first it had 1 or 2 per day, then a reasonable handful per day.  I have no idea how many fruits I got off it, but it seemed like a lot.  I started to record the number of every fruit harvested from one plant from 06/02/2017 until the end of the season.  We don't pick the fruit, when they are ripe they drop from the plant.  I counted every fruit I picked each day, and kept a tally until the end of the season.

In the first week of recording I harvested over 130 fruits not including any that were stolen by birds, hollowed out by ants, or eaten surreptitiously by my children who absolutely love cape gooseberries.  The plants were suffering from here due to an infestation of spider mites and lost a lot of leaves, so the yield declined but I kept recording the number of fruits that I picked.

After two weeks of recording I had picked over 200 fruits from one plant, again not including any that were stolen.  After three weeks of recording I had picked over 280 fruits.  In one month of recording I had picked 327 fruits from one plant.  Every day the spider mites got worse and the plant lost more leaves.

Over the season I harvested 441 Cape Gooseberry fruits from one plant.  Given that I did not start counting for a few weeks, and that my kids stole a bunch of them before I could count them, I guess that each plant probably produced over 500 fruits.

Each of the tiny and delicious fruits averaged 2 g, some weighed more, some weighed less.  So each plant yielded about 1 kg of fruit this year.

Considering that my soil was not great and my plants were defoliated by spider mites I think it could have yield significantly more fruits.

Cape gooseberry fruits

Cape gooseberries

Cape gooseberries ripening in the sun

Cape gooseberries - they are ripe when they fall from the plant

Basil comparison

Last summer I trialed some different basil (Ocimum basilicum) varieties.  The seeds were all planted on the same day, once they germinated and grew a little the seedlings were all planted out on the same day.  The difference in growth was rather amazing.  I should have put something in the pictures for scale but didn't.

I also grew a few other basils, but they were not part of this comparison, or the seeds were planted at a different time, or they were grown from cuttings, so I have not included them here.

Lettuce Leaf 185
I liked this one, good taste, nice basil smell, nice large leaf, productive.  I should grow this one again.

USSR 87
Good taste, good size leaf, not productive enough for my liking.

Usbekistan 146
The purple splodge looked nice, but they were not very productive and smelled too much like licorice for my liking.

Gigante
This was ok, slow to produce well

Dwarf Greek Basil
Strangely productive for a little plant, flowered very late, tiny little leaves, great taste.

Lettuce leaf 180
Not very large leaves for a 'lettuce leaf' type.  Flowered too early.

Grand Vert de Genes
Already flowering in this picture.  Too much work trying to remove flowers.

Mexican
Not productive, look how tiny it was.  I probably won't grow this one again.

Minette
Grew larger than greek dwarf.  Very productive with little leaves.  Great taste.

Genovese
Large plants, very productive, great taste, large leaves.  I like this, it is the benchmark that I compare all other basil to.

Skirret plants Australia

I have had a few questions about skirret lately so thought I would write a post to answer them.  Skirret (Sium sisarum) is a rare perennial root vegetable that should be grown more widely by home gardeners.  I have written a few blog posts on skirret before, you can use the 'search' button at the top right side of the page to find them.

Skirret was once grown and eaten throughout Europe, then fell out of fashion when vegetables such as the potato were brought back from the new world.  Now, especially in Australia, almost no one has ever heard of skirret, let alone eaten it.  It is too bad because skirret tastes amazing.

Skirret can be planted as a seed in spring, it produces a crop, flowers and produces more seed all in one year.  Not many perennial vegetables can produce a crop this quick from seed grown.  Skirret plants also produce offsets, so when the plant dies down over winter the offsets can be divided, the seeds can be planted and you can increase the number of plants that you have.  Skirret seed shows a surprising amount of genetic diversity, that combined with how many seeds it sets, plus its perennial nature, makes breeding improved skirret varieties relatively simple.

Skirret likes water and thrives in cool climates, if in a hot climate it grows well enough if given more water.  It can survive with less water, but does not crop well.  You really can't over water skirret.

Skirret roots, it was the end of the season when I had eaten all the large roots that I remembered to take a picture, many were a bit longer than this

Skirret is dormant over winter, no matter how cold it gets here the plants always survive.  We have had frosts below -8C this last winter and my plants were completely undamaged.  Skirret flowers attract beneficial insects to the garden, they seem to be visited often by wasps.  I have never had any pests damage my skirret other than snails and slugs when it is very small.

Young skirret plants

Skirret is very simple to grow, productive, and tastes great, but it is not suited to mechanical harvest and the roots don't store well once dug so will never be a main crop anywhere.  The amazing taste, ease of growth and high yield means that it is well suited to home growers.  Being perennial means it can be left to do its own thing and just dug up at harvest time.  We dig up roots when we need them for a meal, anything we leave behind we will either dig up later, or if we miss it this year it will continue to grow larger for next year.

Skirret is such an amazing vegetable that everyone who I have given some to has loved it.  Kids even love the taste of skirret.  I have never heard of anyone eat some and not love it.

Skirret leaves, stems and seeds can be eaten, and they are not without their charm, but it is the roots that are the main crop here.  The roots can be eaten raw, and they are ok, much like a sweet crunchy carrot, but skirret is far better roasted.  It is easily the best tasting roasted vegetable that I have eaten.  It doesn't need to be peeled, just scrub off the soil and roast away.  Skirret tastes incredibly sweet and rich once roasted.

Skirret plants - crowded but still good

Most people plant skirret about 30 cm apart, or about 9 per square meter, as this gives them plenty of room to grow.  I plant them far closer than that.  I am limited by the amount of space I have, I am not limited by the number of plants.  The yield per plant declines when planted too close like this, but the yield per area is increased. 

Skirret starting to flower in late summer

Skirret roots can have a woody core.  This is mostly seen in young plants or plants that have not had enough water over the growing season.  I have culled pretty hard and most of my plants no longer have any woody core at all.  I am hoping to completely eliminate the woody genes from my population and only grow superior plants.  I don't know if I will ever achieve this as I don't know anything about the genes that cause woodiness.

Skirret also seems to be good when planted near leek.  The skirret is the same, but the leeks appear to grow faster and larger.  I should do some little tests to see if this was just a coincidence.

Where to buy skirret in Australia
Not many places in Australia have skirret for sale, hopefully that changes as skirret is a delicious vegetable that is well suited to growing at home.  Skirret needs some breeding work done to make the roots fatter.  I sell skirret offsets over winter, small plants over spring, and seeds all year.  They are listed on my for sale page if you are interested.

Land Cress as a Cabage White Butterfly Dead End Trap Crop

Land Cress (Barbarea vulgaris) is also known as Upland Cress, American cress, Rocketcress,  Bittercress,Yellow Rocket, and has a few other common names.  Common names can be deceptive, for example a sea horse is not related to a horse and a sea cucumber is an animal and not even a plant, so always try to go by the binomial name when buying plants to ensure you get what you want.

Cabbage White Butterfly is a major pest of brassicas in Australia and many other countries.  They quickly decimate brassica crops and controlling them organically can be problematic.  There are a lot of superstitious myths about controlling them which do not work, as well as a few techniques that help quite a lot.

We have controlled cabbage white butterfly in the past by using white strips of plastic (cut from a white plastic bag), tied in the middle to a piece of string, so it looks like a lot of white butterflies are flapping around.  This results in less butterflies laying eggs on your plants, apparently the butterflies do not want to lay where there are heaps of other butterflies to help ensure their young will have enough food.  It does not completely eradicate the pest, but it lowers the numbers to a level where they can be picked off by hand each day.  This has worked well for me many times in the past.  This is a lot of work unless it is a very small area, and if you fall ill a day or two the caterpillars sometimes eat out your crop, surely there is a better way!

I have heard people claim that egg shells will deter cabbage white butterflies as they also think it is other butterflies.  I have tried this several times and had no noticeable difference.  Not only has this never worked for me, but birds tend to steal the egg shells.  Before you ask, no, the birds did not make any noticeable effect on the butterfly population but they often caused damage in the garden.  This appears to be one of those superstitious garden myths that fill gardening books, are spouted by people who should know better, and actually prevent people from growing food organically.

Many people claim that Upland Cress can be used as a dead end trap crop for cabbage white butterfly.  They claim that the butterflies are attracted to land cress, they lay the eggs there instead of on other brassica crops.  Once the eggs hatch the young caterpillars are meant to bite the leaf and some toxin kills them, other places claim that the caterpillars can't eat the upland cress so they die.  The information varies between sources, but the cabbage white butterfly caterpillars are not meant to survive and grow to be able to complete their life cycle.

This sounds like a perfect solution to cabbage white butterflies.  I was extremely excited when I first heard about this.  I did some research so ensure that it was Barbarea vulgaris that was referred to and not some other plant with the common name of 'land cress'.

I bought some Barbarea vulgaris seeds and planted them near some other brassicas.  I have done this twice now with the same result.

I wanted to see if Barbarea vulgaris:
1) prevented cabbage white butterflies from laying eggs on other brassica plants
2) killed the young caterpillars
3) prevented the caterpillars from completing their lifecycle.

Achieving any of these things would be fantastic as it means that upland cress could be used as a way to reduce cabbage white butterfly damage.  I will break down my experience under similar headings so other you can learn from my mistakes.

1) Does Upland cress prevent cabbage white butterflies laying eggs on other crops.
No.  My upland cress certainly attracts the butterflies and they lay eggs on it.  Unfortunately they also lay eggs on all the other brassicas in my garden apart from water cress (which was somewhat protected).  If the upland cress kills the young caterpillars it could be used to lower the numbers of cabbage white butterflies and be of some benefit.

Land cress with cabbage white butterfly larvae and frass

2) Does Upland Cress kill Cabbage White Butterfly Caterpillars when they feed on it?
No.  The eggs hatch and the caterpillars happily eat it to the ground leaving nothing but tiny stems.  The picture above shows some growing and it has third instar caterpillars on it.  This means that they not only can survive on upland cress, they can grow on it too.  Perhaps they will eat out the cress but some chemical in its leaves will prevent them from completing their lifecycle.  I decided to leave some caterpillars to see what would happen.

3) Does Upland cress prevent cabbage white butterfly from completing its lifecycle?
No.  The caterpillars grow and pupate into butterflies, thus completing the lifecycle and rendering upland cress useless as a bio-control for cabbage white butterfly.


Upland Cress does not control cabbage white butterfly

Clearly Upland cress does NOT kill cabbage white butterfly larvae and can not be used as an effective means of controlling this pest.  I had such high hopes that this would be used as a way of at least lowering the number of cabbage white butterflies or lessening their damage.  I guess I could grow upland cress and pick off the caterpillars, but I could grow any brassica and do the same so upland cress provides no benefit here whatsoever.  I am very disappointed by this result.

Some very reputable sources claim that Barbarea vulgaris works as a dead end trap for cabbage white butterfly, but as I have demonstrated clearly it doesn't work under all situations.  Thanks for nothing Gardening Australia and Jerry Colby Williams!  Thanks for nothing seed sellers who have a vested interest.  They should know better and stop spreading this nonsense.  This is one of the reasons why I try not to read organic gardening books or magazines, they are often filled with inaccuracies such as this that cause far more harm than good.

Upland cress is useless against cabbage white butterfly

Apparently there is research that suggests that Upland Cress (Barbarea vulgaris) does control cabbage white butterfly under certain situations.  I have not read this research myself so don't know under what specific circumstances it has worked.  Unfortunately it does not work in my garden, so there is more to it than simply growing upland cress to control these butterflies.  Perhaps there is some predator or some disease or something else that is at work that is simply not present in my garden.

Regardless, upland cress does not control cabbage white butterflies in my garden and there is no guarantee it will be any different in yours.