Hey there, I'm Nicole Burke the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary, Incorporated.
Today I want to teach you how to regrow romaine lettuce. It's serious garden magic.
So to do this project, all you need is one head of romaine lettuce and some water and a little coffee mug, a little one, not a big one. You want to make sure the circumference is as small as or smaller than like that large Starbucks kind of coffee mug.
To do this project it's super simple.
You'll also need a knife.
You're just going to cut it. So you're going to cut right about 2 inches. In and the higher you cut. Just cut about two inches in, trust me on this one.
So, we're going to cut it as straight, nice clean cut and and there we have it. So, all we've got to do now is take a little bit of water and pour it into our tiny coffee mug. You don't want much; only about the height of the water that is the bottom root, it’s not really the root. It's like that base of the plant, these leaves. These parts of the leaves do not need to get wet
or they're going to get soggy and kind of mildewy.
As soon as you do that, you're going to put your base down into the mug and it should be basically barely coming to the tip of the mug. All right. This is going to go into a windowsill and believe it or not in a few days, if you've got some magic you're going to end up with some growth like this. Can you see? And then a few days later, the growth’s going to look like this.
You're going to go from this, to this, and then maybe 10, 12, 14 days later, you've got to have this. Now, if you check out the internet on Pinterest or YouTube, the claims are going to be like “regrow romaine and never buy it from the grocery store again,” and that's the kind of magic that they're claiming to have.
Now, romaine is magical, but this is not going to feed you for the rest of your life, unless you just don't eat very much lettuce. But it teaches us three great things about lettuce plants, which I want you to remember forever.
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Number one, lettuce plants grow quickly.
So this project is going to show you, as you watch how quickly this kind of torn down, ripped apart plant can suddenly start to regrow and you're going to see how these leaves form and get taller and taller. By the way, as this one was growing when it first started, I wanted to take pictures of it and almost every single day it got bigger and bigger and I just I never caught up with my pictures. So it happens quickly. That's the first thing about lettuce plants.
The second thing is that they're small, they don't take up much space, so you can see right here with the base of this romaine lettuce. You can already tell how much space romaine would need in your garden. It's only going to be about 3 to 4 inches maximum. That means that in one square foot, a 12 inch by 12 inch space, you could fit at least nine of these. Nine of them in one square foot! So lettuce plants are small.
The third thing that you’ve got to know now about lettuce plants is that you can cut from them again and again, and again. That's one of my favorite reasons for growing lettuces and leafy greens: it’s because the harvests never stop. So, you take a romaine head like this and you come out and decide: ”Okay, I want to have some lettuce tonight.”
So you'd pull off one leaf and the other leaf and what you're doing is you're pulling off the oldest growth off of this plant. So, this would make a pretty good size salad, right? Then, the next day or say two or three days later you come back, and you take this leaf and this leaf and this leaf. And then you're going to give your plants some days to recover because you've pulled quite a lot over it, off of it. But then in the next two to three weeks you're going to get to do that again and again. Because what happens with lettuce plants is they are growing right from the center.
They're growing from their heart. So they're super giving, they give to you again and again, so, if you're looking for a plant to grow, to start out within the kitchen garden, I think lettuces are awesome.
So you'd pull off one leaf and the other leaf and what you're doing is you're pulling off the oldest growth off of this plant. So, this would make a pretty good size salad, right? Then, the next day or say two or three days later you come back, and you take this leaf and this leaf and this leaf. And then you're going to give your plants some days to recover because you've pulled quite a lot over it, off of it. But then in the next two to three weeks you're going to get to do that again and again. Because what happens with lettuce plants is they are growing right from the center. They're growing from their heart. So they're super giving, they give to you again and again, So, if you're looking for a plant to grow, to start out within the kitchen garden, I think lettuces are awesome.
Number one, because they grow quickly just like we see here.
Number two, is they don't take up a lot of space. I almost, I forgot my point, like this shows us right here, only three or so inches.
Number three, you can cut from them again and again and again and again,
So I hope you enjoy this project. Please post your progress. I want to see what Garden magic you make happen in your own kitchen.
