# Growing vegetables from scraps



## bgc_fan (Apr 5, 2009)

I know there are quite a few gardeners on the site, but I was wondering if there were any casual types who grow just a few vegetables from table scraps like those mentioned at these websites:

Infographic: 19 Foods You Can Regrow from Scraps

17 Plants You Grow from Kitchen Scraps 

They seem to be fairly simple to do, though I guess it really depends on what your eating habits are like. Not to mention the fact that a lot of gardening is a batch process for things like garlic and ginger, so I'm curious what do you do when you just have a whole stash at harvest.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Some interesting info, I have done basil, garlic, and onions. There's a few more I may try, thanks for the link.

I don't think avocado, pineapple, or hot peppers will work will work here, since they can't even grow out of plant here.


----------



## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

I bought one bunch of green onions in the spring, ate half of them and planted the rest in a pot on the back porch. All summer when I wanted green onions I went out and cut them with a scissors, leaving a couple of inches of green above the roots. They keep growing back. Had more onions than I could use all summer.


----------



## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

I used to grow green peppers from seed but never got much for it, maybe 1 or 2 golf ball size peppers if it was a hot summer. One time I kept back one plant and left it in the kitchen window, it grew for 10 years and even produced peppers.


----------



## bgc_fan (Apr 5, 2009)

Plugging Along said:


> Some interesting info, I have done basil, garlic, and onions. There's a few more I may try, thanks for the link.
> 
> I don't think avocado, pineapple, or hot peppers will work will work here, since they can't even grow out of plant here.


I suspect anything with a tree is pretty much out of the picture unless you have a greenhouse. 

When it comes to garlic how much and how often do you harvest? I guess once a growing season? I assume you would have to plant in a garden.


----------



## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Some thing are now no longer possible to grow from scraps in some cases. Some potatoes are sprayed with chemicals which impede their ability to sprout, more common in the states, but I've seen some appear up here.

Also, some genetically modified plants won't reproduce with viable plants if you use the seeds, especially true in grains these days. The patent holders want you to buy new seed each year.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

Rusty O'Toole said:


> I bought one bunch of green onions in the spring, ate half of them and planted the rest in a pot on the back porch. All summer when I wanted green onions I went out and cut them with a scissors, leaving a couple of inches of green above the roots. They keep growing back. Had more onions than I could use all summer.



what a wonderful idea. I *must* try this. I just know it'll work!

i've posted here in cmf about how i grow radish, beet, turnip & cabbage plantlets from their tops. Or rather, i try to grow.

the first year the radishes were sensational. The plants developed into full flowering plants with delicious aromatic green leaves. These i kept snipping for salads all summer long.

alas, never again. I think the above must have been a year for extra-successful compost, idk. But i've never been able to replicate those 12 or 15 inch high lush green radish plants, with their pale pink edible flowers.

all other efforts - plus all the beet tops, turnip tops, cabbage tops - that i try produce a stunted plantlet with a brief show of smallish edible green leaves. They are delicious in salads & i always have great hopes, but shortly after the first snipping, the plantlet always dies.

this keeps telling me that the radish, beet, etc top cutting failed to establish roots. It was able to push up a few leaves in a small plantlet for perhaps 2 or 3 weeks, but basically it was dying without roots.

i'm going to read all those links, though. Perhaps they'll show me what i've been doing wrong.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

bgc_fan said:


> I suspect anything with a tree is pretty much out of the picture unless you have a greenhouse.
> 
> When it comes to garlic how much and how often do you harvest? I guess once a growing season? I assume you would have to plant in a garden.


I have only done once a growing season. I just throw it into the garden. However, my mom would always replant a garlic on the window sill pots, and we always seemed to have garlic.


----------



## wendi1 (Oct 2, 2013)

Avocados are usually used as a decorative house plant - I've never gotten fruit off of them.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

duh. lightbulb. i think i might have figured out - from the pictures in the above links - why my cuttings wouldn't root.

i've been planting the _tops_ of the vegetables, not the rooting bottoms. 

of course many veg are sold with the bottom rootlet portion completely trimmed off. Turnips, parsnips, cabbages are sold like that.

still, planting the bottoms instead of the tops of beets, turnips, cabbages, radishes etc might work better.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

wendi1 said:


> Avocados are usually used as a decorative house plant - I've never gotten fruit off of them.



growing avocados propped up by toothpicks in jars of water ... think kindergartens & grade ones with all those rows of little jars along sunny windowsills each:


----------



## bgc_fan (Apr 5, 2009)

humble_pie said:


> growing avocados propped up by toothpicks in jars of water ... think kindergartens & grade ones with all those rows of little jars along sunny windowsills each:


Reminds me of the old science fairs before they have started researching how to cure cancer.



Plugging Along said:


> I have only done once a growing season. I just throw it into the garden. However, my mom would always replant a garlic on the window sill pots, and we always seemed to have garlic.


Interesting. I will probably try it some time, though I imagine I need to find some organic and not sourced from China to try growing.



Rusty O'Toole said:


> I bought one bunch of green onions in the spring, ate half of them and planted the rest in a pot on the back porch. All summer when I wanted green onions I went out and cut them with a scissors, leaving a couple of inches of green above the roots. They keep growing back. Had more onions than I could use all summer.


I am just trying the water only approach. I guess potting them makes them last a little longer, but I figure that water growth is easier to take care of them.


----------



## Ponderling (Mar 1, 2013)

I keep a few garnish like plants - green onions, chives, etc going as perennials. 

I'm about 5km north of Lake Ontario, so winter is not too severe here (I grew up 150km north of Lake Ontario in the eastern lea of Georgian Bay - I know what winter can be like in colder .snowier parts of Canada.)

Some plants last a few years with a pile of leaves stuffed around them to over winter, and a fresh dump of compost worked around them in the spring. 

My Chives bunch, planted next to the back door, with no care other than the above treatment has been going strong for more than 10 years for me.

Alas, despite my TLC my rhubarb, which should be perennial, has passed on. Not wet enough in some months, I guess, where I had it.


----------



## Tom Dl (Feb 15, 2011)

I have a green juicer that allows me to enjoy juice from grasses and plants like dandelions. In season, which is a good deal of the year, it is pretty much the cheapest form of farming I know. Eat your lawn. Out of season I prefer to cultivate wheat grass.


----------

