Re-Grow Your Kitchen Scraps! — Planting Parmelee

Food is an inevitable expense in all households. If you are the shopper for your family, you know the total at the register can add up quickly…very quickly. Did you know you have renewable resources hiding in your kitchen already? There are handfuls of different foods that you can actually REGROW from what you thought were scraps of trash or compost – stretching both your food and budget!

(Whew…those windows need washing!)

Here’s a list of hidden treasures:

Green onion

Lemongrass

Lettuce

Celery

Leeks

Bok Choy

Napa Cabbage

Herbs (basal/cilantro)

After you’ve chopped your veggies down to the root, place them in a glass of cool water. It’s as easy as that. The green onions only took four days, and they were ready for another use, they are now on round 3 of re-growth! Doing this beats runing to the store to spend $2/package!

Some plants you regrow will do better after transplanting into a small pot of soil. You know your plant is ready when you see root growth and several inches of upwards growth. This includes:

lettuce
leeks
cabbage
lemongrass
bok choy
celery
herbs

Keep in mind, this will not work with plants that have been pickled or cooked. It takes patience and frequent water changes to keep the plants healthy. Hands down, green onions are the easiest and fastest on this list! Others, like lettuce and cabbage, will take more time to create enough for a second use. I’ve noticed the lettuce water gets the muckiest fastest, whereas leeks and green onions can stay in the same water for several days over.

Happy Growing! Love, Shannon