Taken from the website:
When in the kitchen whipping up salads, soups, and stews, you typically pile up random scraps from freshly sliced veggies and fruits. Possibly, within that slurry of unwanted produce pieces, you have pits and seeds that could be the foundations for fresh new plants. Instead of tossing them, put them to work.
Katie Elzer-Peters, an author with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in horticulture, describes exactly how to “regrow your leftover greens, stalks, seeds, and more” in her book, “No-Waste Kitchen Gardening.”
This is a fun 'primer' that would be perfect for teaching children (and adults, really) several lessons... think what you can do with it before you throw anything away! Perfect RRR - Reuse, Reduce, Recycle!
Edibles such as celery, head lettuce, green onions, leeks, garlic, bok choy, and many other veggies can continue to produce fresh green, edible leaves, if you put the root base in a dish, bowl, cup, or any container with water.
Other scraps that can continue to give you edible greens are sweet potatoes, turnips. radishes. carrots.
Avocado seeds will root and start a new plant.
New pineapple plants can be started from the discarded tops!
Sesame seeds, caraway seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, and other seeds sprout into edible microgreens.
Unpopped popcorn kernels yield microgreens with a sweet flavor.
How to:
You will need a cup or bowl, a sharp knife, and some pebbles.
- Prepare the onions or any other root-stock for rooting by cutting off the green tops and leaving about an inch of the stem (mostly white) attached to the roots at the very bottom.
- Fill the bottom of the cup or bowl with ½ to ¾ inch of clean pebbles.
- Fill a cup or bowl with water so that the pebbles are covered with ½ inch of water.
- Place the bottoms of the onions in the pebbles, making sure that the pieces are half submerged.
- Set the cup or bowl in an area of bright, indirect light. The more light, the longer your regrowing onions will last.
- Change the water every couple of days.
Harvest and keep growing! Snip off the young green leaves for use on top of soups, to add flavor to sandwiches, and for stirring into salads. Keep your green onion harvest growing longer by planting the rooted cuttings in potting soil or into the garden outside. Green onions grow best during cool weather, so plant them outside during the spring or fall.
The author says:
It’s usually easy. It potentially saves money, and it reduces food waste. Every time you throw [the stem from a head of lettuce] away, you’re potentially throwing away six to 10 more lettuce leaves. Also, it’s fun. Watching these plants change from what you brought home in a bag from the grocery story is very interesting.
For more fun scraps that you can 're-grow' check here:
