If you are looking to grow more food from your kitchen scraps, there are some important things that you need to know to see a higher level of success. So in today’s article, we will help you understand which scraps have a higher chance of giving you more food, and which ones are better off left as being experiments.
Plant Morphology
To do that, we will go into plant morphology or the physical parts of plants to get a better sense of why certain plants or parts will or won’t push out more parts for us to eat. And knowing this bit of information will help us set more realistic expectations of these little scraps.
Seed To Tree
Probably the most captivating regrow hack articles are the ones around growing fruit, like citrus, apples, cucumbers, mangoes, and kiwis. Now, the thing with these fruit is that even though you can harvest these seeds and grow something, it will likely take you years before you can grow the plant into something of a decent size to actually harvest fruit. This is especially true with citrus and apples. So commercially, these are grafted plants, meaning that they are not grown from seed. When you grow these from seed, they generally don’t exhibit the same characteristics as the fruit that you harvested the seeds from. And also by grafting, commercial growers skip that baby seedling process, because if you grow from seed, it will take many years before you can actually turn that seedling into a tree that you can harvest these beautiful fruit from.
Non Viable Seeds
Sometimes it’s not about the weight, it’s about whether the seeds are duds or not. So if you are a fan of English cucumbers, they are seedless or near seedless. So if you look at the seeds, they’re transparent, see-through. They’ve got nothing really going on inside. So if you try to grow them from seed, nothing’s really gonna happen ’cause nothing is there. Same goes with a lot of squashes, melons, and basically any fruit that is harvested underripe or bread to not have seeds. So you’re not really going to have any luck trying to grow these from seeds. With mangoes and the classic avocado, if you live in a warmer climate and you are okay waiting many years, I say go for it. But if you are in a cooler climate, be prepared to keep these plants as lovely indoor foliage plants. Although kiwi seeds are not technically scraps, since you can eat all of this, let me save you half a decade or so of waiting if you are considering growing kiwi plants from seeds. This is because kiwi vines, they can grow really vigorously. So if you can get your hands on a small cutting and get that rooted and in the ground, you will see kiwi fruit in a short amount of time.
Vegetative parts
So now let’s switch it up and talk about the vegetative parts of plants, which are the leaves, stems and roots, as opposed to reproductive parts, which are the flowers, fruit, and seeds. Now, typically, the vegetative parts grow a lot faster and more abundantly compared to, let’s say, fruit. And thankfully, many of the kitchen scraps that we end up with will push out some sort of vegetative part for us to eat if given the right conditions, such as putting them in water or some moist soil and providing them with some light.
Trying Scrap Experiment
And actually, I started a few of these scraps myself a few weeks ago, knowing that I would see some level of success from things like lettuce, celery, green onions, carrot, and beet tops, as well as some other fun ones. So basically, what I did was chop the parts. I placed them in water, and just kept refreshing it, and also placed them in light and waited. So it’s been about a week or so since I took my kitchen scraps and placed them into containers with a little bit of water. And they’ve been in the greenhouse in a well-lit spot, but not overly hot, and I do see some development. So let’s take a look. Okay, let’s look at the celery. So we do see some new leaves emerging, which is nice. But at the bottom here, no signs of roots coming out of this basal area. Same with the carrot, nothing really going on. I’m not really expecting anything right now, it’s only been a week, but there is a little bit of new growth where the leaves are. So that is maybe kinda promising. Over here, this is looking good. This is the base of the leek. So it’s got a nice, healthy, intact stem area where the roots are coming out. It’s looking really good. I’m gonna keep that in the water. And then here, we have green onions, very familiar. The roots are looking good. I mean, they were there to begin with. But then this top part is looking nice and healthy as well. And those are probably ready to go into a container or the ground. Okay, the beet root will not sprout a new tap root, but we see these lovely greens right here. They are feeling nice. And out of this shoulder area, we are seeing new little leaves emerge. So that’s a good sign. We’ve got the lettuce here. We’ve got two types, romaine, which is really common. We see new leaves coming out, but the basal area, nothing quite yet, but that’s okay. Just gonna keep that in water. And I thought I would just do a red leaf lettuce as well, just to show that it does work, as long as you keep this base intact. And actually, over here, we see some new growth, which is good, in the leaves, of course. Everything is looking nice and healthy. So if we’re looking at this and going, “Wow, look at those roots,” well, this was actually taken from one of those clam shell or those bagged living lettuces. So what I did was just trim away the outside leaves, and just left this center area intact. And these are pretty much ready to go into the ground or into a pot as a new baby plant. So it’s been about a week since our first check-in when we were in the greenhouse. And I’m happy to report that those living lettuces that we planted into the soil, directly from one of these hydroponically-grown living lettuces, they seem to be doing quite well. The leaves feel quite turgid, like they’re filled with water, and I do see new growth coming out of the center. Generally, they look really happy, so I’m happy, because with one of these things, I mean, depends on where you buy them from. And if I can get like three to four plants, that’s a pretty good deal, considering I get the plant that I can continually harvest from for the rest of the season. Plus, I get the salad out of it. So what I did was, I obviously separated the plants and planted them, but I kept them in the shade, just to acclimate them to the outdoors, because let’s remember, they weren’t really meant to be plants that you plant in the garden. As you can tell, we are inside now, just because the greenhouse is getting a little bit too hot and I don’t want the heat to ruin our experiment. So this is kinda like the leftover of round one of living lettuce. I’m not trying to grow it hydroponically in this cup because to do that properly, you have to supply it with nutrients, and I’m really not set up to do that right now. So these guys are gonna go into the ground, and I think they’re gonna do just fine. So continuing on with the lettuce, I did add this new, larger romaine lettuce into some water earlier today because I wanna see if the size of this base makes a difference. So this was the first round, this was done two weeks ago. And this romaine is only pushing out this little bit. So it’s kinda disappointing. Now I’m gonna see if the size of the romaine that you start with makes much of a difference. Everything else seems to be kinda hanging around, pushing out leaves. So the beet, the carrot, the celery, and the lemongrass is starting to show a little bit of something growing out of the base. And then the green onions and the leek, they are showing roots, so those can probably go straight into the soil very soon. Here we are today with the same kitchen scraps. Isn’t that amazing? So before we talk about this amazing lettuce and the other plants, there are some other plants that are commonly tossed out because they seem like they’re past their prime, but they are definitely worth regrowing in the garden.
Stems
You probably have some sprouted potatoes or some old crusty ginger kicking around. If they are not overly crusty and mushy, you could probably tuck them into a container and let them leaf out and keep growing. So hopefully, over time, they will produce these delicious underground parts. So potatoes, it would be this stem tuber part. And then for the ginger, it would be these delicious underground rhizomes. Same goes with onion, garlic, and shallots that have started to sprout the green from the top. Or, if you’re cooking, and you’ve used the top part and you’re wondering what to do with this base, if this basal plate or this short compressed stem area right above where the roots are coming out, if that thing is still intact, you can simply tuck that base into a shallow dish of soil, give it some water, it will sprout more green parts for you to harvest throughout the season.
Leaves
So with the leafy lettuce from that living bundle, here they are, amazing. So after three and a half weeks or so, living outdoors, they are practically brand new full-sized plants that you can definitely harvest from. So if I’m going to buy those bundles of living lettuces again, I’m totally going to do this setup by putting them into a container. And with the other lettuces, I did romaine. So this was the original one, very small, very little leaves, nothing in terms of roots. But here’s the younger one, where I chose a larger romaine, big difference. It has, well, bigger leaves and it has roots. So this tells me, start off with bigger and better quality scraps if you wanna see some results. Also, the celery is pushing out leaves and roots, as well as the lemongrass. So I would say all of these can go into containers now. So with the taproot scraps, I’ve got the beet and the carrot. And although we know that it’s not gonna generate a big, bulky taproot for us to eat, the leaves are where it’s at. And for me personally, I would choose to use the counter space for the beets because the greens are very delicious and it’s more abundant as well. Whereas the carrot, even though it is pushing out some fine roots, what it’s going to do even when we put it into a container or the ground, it’s just gonna push out more leaves. And although you can eat the leaves, when the temperatures rise, this little plant is going to start sending up a flower stalk and the leaves are no longer gonna be tasty, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. If you let the carrot flower, a lot of the beneficial insects like hover flies and lace wings really love the flowers, so it’s actually worth tucking this into your garden. Speaking of flowers, here are some lovely white flowers, belonging to Chinese broccoli or kai-lan. So I thought I would have some fun, because I’ve never heard of people taking cuttings from this plant. So I followed propagation techniques, found a node, made a cut underneath to see if roots would form. And, here we have it, we have roots.
Biennials & Flowering
But Chinese broccoli, as well as other brassicas like kales, cabbages and broccoli, they are biennials, which means plant wrap up their life cycle after around a two-ish year cycle. And with the emergence of flowers, that signals the end of their life. And what that means for us hungry humans is that if we turned this into a plant, it’s actually not gonna pump out more leaves or stems for us to eat. So because of this, I’m not gonna bother tucking this into a container, knowing that it’s on its last legs. And this applies to celery and carrots as well, as those are biennials, but the celery should be okay with harvesting the leaves until the flower starts to emerge.
Plant Lifecycle
And we really have to keep a plant’s life cycle in mind, especially when we’re growing these fast-growing plants, like the lettuce. So with lettuce, they are annual plants, meaning they have an even shorter life cycle than the plant that we talked about earlier. So I’m going to try to prolong the life of these plants as long as I can by keeping them cool and hydrated and happy. But it’s going to be inevitable as we enter the hot summer months that these are going to bolt. They’re not gonna taste good, but that’s okay, I’m just gonna remove them and replace them with more leafy kitchen scraps. So the main takeaway here, if your goal is to see a faster turnaround on getting parts to eat, go for plants that push out leaves and stems. These vegetative parts grow faster and more reliably, and they are the practical choice for many of our gardens.
Conclusion
But if you are adventurous and want to experiment, you can go ahead and grow that kiwi from seed, just remember to have fun with it.If there’s more than meets the eye with these regrowing kitchen scrap hacks. Not that they all don’t work, but you just have to know what you’re growing and what you’re getting for it. So hopefully you learned something here from the article over at Epic Gardening. Until next time, good luck in the garden, keep growing, but do not grow worthless kitchen scraps.
