Waste while cooking? This is how you grow new fruit and vegetables!
The bok choy its butt, the tip of the carrot or the seeds of the pepper. Usually, these end up in the trash during cooking, because we don’t use it in a meal. That’s a sin! Because much of the fruit and vegetable waste can be used to grow new fruit and vegetables or to keep it ‘just’ as a nice green plant. These tips will help to give the leftovers from cooking a second life.
nCelery & bok choy
Cut the bottom of a bundle of celery – about 3 to 5 centimeters – and place it in a bowl of water. Also, water or spray the top regularly to keep it moist. Change the water once every few days, until new roots develop at the bottom. When it does, you can transfer the newly growing celery to soil. You can use the same process with bok choy.
nSpring onion & leek
You can also use the bottom of spring onion to grow new shoots. The spring onions can be cut far to the bottom and when you put them in the water they will grow back a few centimetres within a few days! Perfect if you eat spring onions more often and can grow a new portion in this way. The same also applies to re-growing leeks!
nOnion
Do you want to grow a normal onion? Then place the bottom of the onion, which you would normally throw away, directly in the soil and let the roots grow. When the roots are large enough, remove the old ‘onion skins’ and let the roots grow into a new onion plant. At a later stage, remove up to about 1/3 of the stems so the plant will grow a bulb. It is up to you to harvest the onion (early) as spring onion or later as a fully grown onion.
nCarrot
You can eat not only the orange part of a carrot. The green carrot top can also be used in soups, as a base for pesto or as an extra green in salads. After a few days in water, you can put the tips of a carrot back into the soil with the roots. This way you can enjoy it again later or you have a nice green plant with it.
nGarlic
When you take one clove of a garlic bulb and put it completely in soil with the roots down, you will see green shoots in a short time. When you trim these shoots, the plant will develop a bulb that you can use to repeat the process to keep propagating garlic.
nPineapple
Are the above ‘experiments’ a piece of cake for you and are you ready for a bigger challenge? Pineapple also lends itself to grow into a plant, but getting fruit is an exciting and time-consuming process. The ‘crown’ of a pineapple can be rooted in water or soil. That way you quickly have a new plant at home, but by the time a pineapple can actually grow, it will certainly take a number of years. Good luck!
nDid your experiment work? I am very curious! Share it on Instagram with #marvygreen or tag @marvygreen.
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