Cut the root ends off your celery, keep the carrot root top, and lettuce roots (store bought) to plant and they’ll sometimes grow. As you said, plant the tater eyes for next season. Give the lettuce, onions and other greens a haircut rather than pulling them up by the roots and they’ll continue to grow. It’s sad how many who have their stock of “survival seeds” don’t know just those basics.
I have a potato that’s going out tomorrow. Just brought in a couple buckets of tomatoes, a bucket of greens and a handful of peppers, cukes and beans from the garden. It hasn’t done anything this summer (another surprise for the newbies) because it was to HOT. Now, after 50+ days of 100+ temps, it’s finally down to the upper 90s and what a difference it has made.
No water will be another surprise for them. Then there’s the bugs, molds and diseases, the deer, the armadillos and the neighbors
Yup. Good advice about the celery and carrots, they will grow from the cut-off roots or tops.
Another thing I would stress to people is learning about what your veggies might look like when they are juvenile plants. Every year I have various renegade starter plants coming up from seeds or root segments that got distributed around the year before.
People will find that for their particular area, many plants will kind of fizzle and not do good.
But some will grow like weeds and have tremendous yields.
SAVE THE SEEDS FROM THE PLANTS THAT DO WELL!!! In general, save as many seeds as you can, but the plants that do well and thrive in your location are showing they have a good relationship with the temps, the soil, they have strong natural immunity to local fungi and rot, a couple generations of those and you should get excellent yields.
Here where I am, taters do good, lettuce and some greens also. Tomatoes are ok. But the biggest winner in my experience, hands down, are the cruciferous veggies, the cabbages, brussel sprouts, broccoli, kale. They all grow like weeds!
And the slugs pretty much ignore them.