Re Grow your Scraps
One of the easiest ways to produce your own food without having to do all of the planting of seeds and hoping and praying that they will sprout all on their own is to actually regrow the food that you purchase from the supermarket or fruit shop. Whilst I personally love to plant seeds, I am also really bad at forgetting about them and forgetting to water them.
Re-growing food from scraps is also a great way to use up the food that you would otherwise waste and have it on hand for whenever you need to make a recipe that only requires a small amount of an ingredient.
Generally speaking herbs and garnishes are relatively high cost compared to how much you actually need for a recipe and unless you are making pesto from your parsley, or an Asian banquet with spring onion omelettes and fried rice and fried shallots, you are probably going to find your bunch of spring onions withering away and going slimy in the bottom of your fridge.
In fact, in my household, there is actually a name for certain items that I love to purchase and usually never cook - sacrificial vegetables (here's looking at you zucchini!)
When it comes to re growing scraps, we have had varying levels of success with the following plants
- spring onions
- celery
- bok choy
Spring onions (also known as scallions, shallots, green onions or bunching onions) are one of my favourite plants to regrow, given that they are used in such small quantities and add such a quick injection of flavour to all of your favourite Asian dishes. The white part of the spring onion can be sautéed or fried and used as the base of the dish, whereas the green tops add a great garnish to any Asian dish or salad.
How to re-grow Spring Onions from scraps
Spring onions are probably the easiest foods to re grow from scrap.
When you purchase your spring onions:
1. Cut the tops off spring onions, leaving approx. 3 cm above the bulb. You can use up the tops in omelettes or fried rice or you can slice them and freeze the slices for use in omelettes later.
2. Add 1cm of water to a glass or recycled jar and stand the spring onion bulbs in the water.
3. Place the jar on a sunny windowsill- preferably the kitchen where you will remember to care for them!
4. Change the water every day until you see the roots start to grow.
5. Plant your spring onions in a pot (we recycle old milk bottles for this) or the garden and continue to water them.
6. Enjoy your spring onions by cutting their tops off and using in your favourite Asian recipes!
7. Grown this way, the spring onions will continue to regrow about four more times before you will need to retire them and start the process again.
* We usually use the spring onions this way until they just don't seem to be producing very well, then we chuck them into the compost bin and start again!
Have you had any success with growing other vegetables or fruit from scraps?
Let us know in the comments!!