There is a huge list of food that can be regrown from kitchen scraps. Potatoes are the first that spring to mind — plant an eye from a store-bought potato in your garden just like you would any other seed, and you’ll have a new crop of potatoes in a few months. Sprout avocado trees from their pits, grow new onions and celery from their root ends, and get more carrot greens from old carrot tops. You can even grow yourself a pineapple plant from the chopped-off top of your next fresh pineapple purchase!
If you’re like me, you rarely remember to buy fresh herbs at the store, and when you do, they tend to languish in the fridge until they wilt and dry up. One solution — buy some herbs, use them in your next delicious recipe, and use the scraps to start your own kitchen herb garden!
Here’s how to regrow a few tasty herbs and greens, so you’ll never be left without fresh seasonings again.
Green Onions
Chop off the green stem and most of the white to use while cooking. Put the leftover root end (with an inch or two of white stem left) into a bowl of water and watch it regrow green stalks in just a week or two.
Basil / Cilantro
Clip off a few stems (with leaves attached) and put the ends into a small glass of water. Roots will form within a week or two. Transplant the rooted stems into a small pot of soil; you’ll have a full plant in just a couple months.
Rosemary
Cut the top 2-3″ off a few stalks of rosemary and put them into water. Roots will form like the basil and cilantro. Once you see roots, you can transplant the rosemary into a small pot of soil and grow from there.
Lemongrass
Take the root end of a stalk of lemongrass and submerge it in shallow water, with just an inch or two of stalk left above the water line. In a few weeks, you’ll see roots growing down and the stalk growing up. When the stalk is 3-4″ tall, you can transplant it into a pot of soil.
Garlic
Take a few unpeeled garlic cloves and place them in a small pot of soil, root side down. Within just a week or two, you’ll have new green garlic sprouts (called scapes) that you can clip and eat. Chop them into a salad or saute them to throw over pasta, any way you eat them, they’re delicious!