How to Regrow Vegetables From Kitchen Scraps!

You may wish to regrow your vegetables from the original stem or root for many reasons. First, it’s just fun. Second, waste not, want not. Third, it saves money. Finally, you can resprout some vegetables any time of year, even when seed packets are hard to find. 

The fresh food you produce will be tasty and nutritious—and connect you with the natural world!

Which Vegetables Can You Regrow?

Look for veggies with stumps, stems, and roots!

• Begin in the produce aisle of your local supermarket. Toss in a couple of heads of romaine lettuce (or any lettuce attached to an intact base). The butt end of a lettuce head can be planted shallowly and resprouted—meaning it will grow roots and new leaves.
• Now grab a couple of bunches of celery, small onions, and garlic heads. Yes, you can plant cloves of garlic or onion hearts, which will reroot and grow!
• How about a kitchen herb garden? Grab packages of the fresh herbs that you use most: basil, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, and thyme. You can do stem cuttings from these herbs, and they will root at the nodes and grow. You’ll want stems that are at least 4 to 6 inches long.
• Head for the organic section to collect a couple of potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, large radishes, and unwaxed turnips. Why organic? You’ll want your roots to sprout, and many conventionally grown root vegetables have been sprayed to prevent sprouting.
• You can also plant bean sprouts, which will grow into bean plants, and if you’re adventurous, you can regrow ginger, fennel, and lemongrass. Learn all about growing ginger indoors.

These vegetables comprise your garden starters. The cost is negligible because you get to eat much of what you’ve bought.

Gardening Supplies

You’ll also need:

• Containers for your plants. Your imagination is the limiting factor here. The only requirements for a suitable plant container are to hold soil, drain well, and contain no toxic or hazardous materials. Try coffee cans, plastic buckets, galvanized tubs, all with drainage holes punched into the bottom and sides; clay pots of any size or shape; burlap bags; wooden crates; polypropylene shopping bags; sandbags; window boxes; cutaway soda bottles; a length of PVC pipe with planting holes cut out; or pieces of roof gutter with holes drilled in the bottom.
• A bag of sterile potting mix. Don’t use ordinary topsoil from outside. It’s too heavy for indoor plantings and may contain weed seeds, spores of plant diseases, and insect pests.
• Some form of liquid fertilizer. You can find many complete liquid fertilizers at garden centers. I use a commercial product containing fish emulsion and seaweed extract. (It’s very smelly, but the odor dissipates within a few hours.) Use any fertilizer according to package directions.
• Sunny windowsills or a full-spectrum fluorescent light fixture or two. Although leafy crops don’t need as much sun as those that flower and fruit, your growing crops will still need a few hours of sunlight each day. Indoor growers have developed ingenious ways to make the most of their light.
• A watering can and maybe a plant mister. You can even make your own waterer from a plastic jug. A repurposed spray bottle or an inexpensive one will work fine for misting.

Growing Salads and Soup Greens

• Celery from a stump: Just cut the bottom 2 inches from a bunch of celery (refrigerate the stalks for later use) and “plant” it, root side down, in a saucer of water or in a pot containing an inch or two of moist sand or potting mix. Leaves, then tender stalks, will slowly emerge from the center. When the stump is well rooted, transplant it into a larger pot. You can harvest tender stems and leaves for soups and salads for many months.
• Romaine or other lettuce from a stump: Follow the same procedure as for celery. Pick the outer leaves as they mature, leaving new leaves to grow from the center.
• Clone new basil, sage, mint, thyme, oregano, or rosemary plants: Remove lower leaves from the stems of fresh herbs and set the stems in water. Keep the water fresh. Once your stem has good roots, you can plant it in potting mix in a suitable container. Keep the plants growing on a sunny windowsill or under a full-spectrum fluorescent—trim “branches” as needed to clone new plants.
• Sweet potato foliage: Unless you shop at ethnic supermarkets or do a lot of Asian-style cooking, you may not know that sweet potato foliage is edible, tasty, nutritious—and makes a gorgeous, irrepressibly vining houseplant. (Note: Don’t try this with regular potatoes, whose sprouts and leaves are poisonous!) Slice the sweet potato root in half or leave it whole. Use the toothpick method to suspend your sweet potato in a jar of water with the cut side under water until it begins rooting and sprouting. Each little “eye” above the water level will grow a new slip you can remove and place in water to root. You can even grow tubers from your rooted slips in a large polypropylene shopping bag or other suitable container if you have enough space.
• For fresh green onions: Cut a bit of the root ends from cooking onions (leaving an inch or so of flesh) or from a bunch of scallions and plant them in a pot of moist growing medium. You can even plant a whole cooking onion that’s begun to sprout. Trim blades for use as the new scallions reach harvestable size.
• To grow beet, radish, or turnip greens: Follow steps similar to those of sweet potatoes. You can use the toothpick-suspension method or plant your cut roots in a large, shallow bowl with water, clean sand, or some small rocks. Remove the largest outer leaves (if any), cut off about a third of the root, and set the flat-cut end in the bowl. Once each root grows a healthy set of roots and leaves, plant in a container of potting mix. As the new plant grows, harvest the outer leaves for salads or cooking; leave the center leaves to grow.

Try it yourself, and let us know how it goes!

Speaking of growing from scraps, many people also sprout avocado seeds for fun. See how to grow your own avocado plant!