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How to Regrow Vegetables from Scraps
Regrowing vegetables from food scraps is a very fulfilling thing to do. It is easy and has great rewards. This is a great way to add value to something that you would otherwise throw away. Food scraps, or think of them as remnants of food and vegetables which are able to be re-grown and re-used for future enjoyment and nutrition. Re-growing food scraps is a great way to eliminate extra waste and put some good use back into a scrap which you may not know has a lot of value! There are many ways to re-grow scraps using end pieces, stems, seeds and even tops of some items and with the right amount of light, water or soil you are on your way to success!
Here are some examples of easy ways to re-grow your kitchen scraps:
Regrow Green Onions
Green onions are one of the easiest vegetables to re-grow for re-use. The reason for this is that the green stalk part, re-grows easily from the white/root. What you want to do is go ahead and use the green stalk part as you normally would for cooking/seasoning but keep about 2-3 inches of green above where the white onion part begins and keep the roots as well. You will submerge this root/white part in a glass of water.. About 2 inches deep..covering the roots and most of the white part. You will notice in 2-3 days you have quite a stalk of green re-growing! Once it is tall and grown, feel free to cut it off and use as you would in your cooking. Change the water out every couple days and you can enjoy your green onions as a re-grown food scrap!
Regrowing Celery
Celery is a great vegetable to re-grow from a scrap. So, most of us use the celery stalks and then use it to about 2-3 inches from the end where it starts to turn slightly white. This bottom end of the celery is what you would normally throw away. Instead, you will cut the celery stalks off to use for cooking, eating etc..and leave about 3 or so inches from the end so you can set this end of the celery as one piece into a low cup or bowl. Add about an 1 – 1 ½ inches of water and set in a sunny spot. The inside of the celery stalk will start to re-grow. You will need to change the water out every couple days and as you do this over a week or so you will see green celery leaves regenerating from the inside stalks. It is a great thing to watch! Re-growing celery will grow a bit slower than green onions but be patient and you will have new stalks to enjoy!
Regrow Lettuce
Romaine lettuce is a great one to re-grow from scraps. Most of us pull the leaves off our lettuce and toss out the end piece of the lettuce because we think it has absolutely no value for us. This end piece if you can cut it down about 2 inches from the end.. You have a key to a new lettuce plant of leaves in a few weeks! This will not re-create an entire head of lettuce, but you will get new leaves to re-use in small portions. So, go ahead and use your lettuce leaves as you normally would. But when you get to the end piece, keep it. Trim it down to be about 2 inches long and remove some of the side leaves and place the end piece in about 2 inches of water in a glass container. Place this food scrap of lettuce in the sun like in a window sill and watch the leaves re-grow!
Regrowing Bell Peppers
Lastly, a really easy way to re-grow some vegetables from scraps, is to save the seeds from your next bell pepper you eat! We normally we throw out the middle of bell peppers and toss the seeds. In this case, you want to save those seeds! Pick your favorite kind of bell pepper, save the seeds and you are on your way. Next you would take the seeds and poke a little hole into soil and simply drop them in. They need to be just a couple seeds in a small pen sized 1 inch deep hole in moist soil. Then remember to water the soil every day to keep it moist. When you see the leaves grow, you are on your way. You can then move these little pepper plants into a larger pot to continue to grow them into peppers. It is a great way to re-grow vegetables from seeds you would normally throw away!
Bonus Tip - Regrow Herbs
HERBS– Many herbs will re-grow from their own stalk with roots as long as you cut them from what is called the “node”. Cut them above the node and then place this in water in a jar or cup on your window sill or other sunny spot. Once you see a good amount of roots growing from this stalk, you can move it to plan in soil. The roots need to grow and become sturdy so this herb plan can grab a hold of its new living space in soil and take full root there.
Always re-use Your Vegies
Well there you have it. Tips on what to do with vegetables which seem to be like waste can all be re-used and recycled. Start your own garden tomorrow with tonight's left overs. We would love to hear from you if you have tried this or after you have given it a shot. Something fun to do today and enjoy in a few weeks.
