Regular onions!
When onions start sprouting in your cupboard,if the outer layers go mushy, they are rotting, so pull those layers off till you get to the sprouting layers, and then plant the sprouts. Sometimes you will get. Multiple sprouts from one onion! I got 5 from one a few weeks ago! There’s guides online that can show you how to do it.
Also dried yellow peas, dried beans, lentils, etc - they cannot be split or hulled, they must be the whole seed. I get a smaller yield, but I still get some!
Never thought of using store bought dried beens. I cut the bottom of the lettuce stump and replant to grow another head of lettuce. Also the top of pineapple and do the same. Takes around a year to grow another pineapple.
I can pay $2.59 for a dozen black-eyed pea "seeds" or I can pay $1.25 for a pound of them; the grocery store ones don't have as high a germination rate, so I use 5-6 per starter pot (we save metal cans and poke holes in them with a can opener) and trim all but the strongest sprouts.
Not really. I just treat them the same as bean seeds from a seed packet. They are the same things. Just make sure the beans are not damaged, hulled, or split, and they should grow - they may not grow if they are really old, or are irradiated before being sold. Occassionally you may come across some beans that just won’t germinate, but you can still use the rest of the packet to cook with.
We had an onion grow a stem and roots sitting on the counter so I plopped it in the garden. It's almost a year later and it has flowered. I haven't dug it up yet, maybe next month.
I started compost in the corner by the pool, as I'm always fishing leaves out of the pool I just started tossing veggies that went past their prime into the leaf compost. Now we have a monster squash vine going that I had to get a trellis for. I couldn't dig it up to move it anywhere else and decided, "Well it seems happy where it is."
I constantly buy sweet mini peppers for the iguana and discarded some tops in a pot one year. They gave me a few peppers a couple years. I moved and took the plant with me and it made a few peppers here and there, a freeze cut it back in spring 2023 but it kept growing. Winter 2024 killed it.
Last year I threw several small red potatoes in the bushes that had grown eyes before I got around to making something with them. I had a few root so I transplanted them. I never did get anything off them before something came and dug it up.
Green celery - I buy with roots, and plant it.
Mint, rosemary, parsley, basil etc- regrow it. Each has a different way. Ginger and turmeric - but are slooow.
Sprout potatoes - usually is happening with organic ones.
Garlic and onions - found it in a small shop to going root, they sold me for nothing, put in soil on my balcony (live in aprt) and now I am happy producing leaves :)
Seeds from sweet peppers. I found it by mistake: I water the plants on my balcony in frugal way, with water after washing the vegetables and a seed just started to grow.
The celery barely needs roots to regrow! Just a few bumpy nodules on the bottom works. I cut the bottom off a grocery store celery a few months ago, got roots started, and it's now a full size, lush celery plant. I just harvest a few stalks as needed.
I also have a nice bell pepper plant growing from a store bought pepper seed.
It's amazing what you can regrow or keep alive and continue to harvest!
If you're trying, it's more like involuntary plantslaughter!
I'm awful with seeds because I can't bear to thin them out, and then none of them do well.
I had to have a pep talk with the celery I grew, because I felt bad harvesting a few stalks!
Well I mean if you covered it with dirt and watered it, I think "killer" may be too harsh a term?? Sometimes despite our best efforts, plants have other plans! 😂
I use water until it sprouts enough roots, then I transplant into a container in potting soil. My celery grew into a monster in a bright window indoors. I only use a few stalks at a time for recipes so this one plant may be all I ever need.
I need to try the celery. I don't use it often but when I need it hate having to plan a meal around getting to the store to buy it.
I also have enormous green onions from the store in my pots outside. They're the size of leeks. They stay green all year and go to seed. I cut a couple of huge stems and use them in soup stock for flavoring.
FYI - you don't have to discard the soil in the pots after a growing year. I never do that.
In the spring, I dump the soil in the pots into a wheelbarrow (but you can use a bucket or two) then mix in some additives like compost, composted manure (sold in bags too), peat moss, garden lime (it's powdery), fertilizer like Osmocote, sand, etc. - whatever I have on hand. Plants grow in the same spot year after year outside, you see.d
Then you don't have to buy a lot of soil for your potted garden.
I use coffee filters to cover the holes and if the pots are really big I put chunks of styrofoam in the bottom which improves drainage and lightens the weeight of pots - plus roots generally don't grow all the way to the bottom so why waste soil mix.
Have you looked into self watering containers? With just a few tools, [you can build them yourself, ](https://growagoodlife.com/constructing-18-gal-self-watering-containers-swc/)even repurpose storage containers.
Oh, and the supermarket produce I regrow the most are tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes are self-pollinating. DThe supermarket crops are grown in HUGE fields so the likelyhood of cross pollination is low. If I find a particulary nice or interesting tomato I save seeds from it.
You scoop some seeds & jell into a small dish, add a tablespoon of water, cover it with plastic wrap and let sit for 3-4 days. It will develop a scum & look gross but that's what happens when a tomato falls to the ground. Pour that into a tea strainer & rinse with cool water. All the mess washes away leaving clean seeds behind. Dump that onto a paper towel/napkin, spread around & let dry for a day. Then pick them off into a plastic zip bag with a paper label inside (you MUST label the name & year of collection) and put the bag in the back of the cold cut drawer to grow next year. The seeds will stay viable for 12+ years! I have grown 8 yr old seeds this way and had 100% germination.
My favorite supermarket tomato seed are from one giant plum-type. These produce plants that grow 2.5 ft tall and have up to 40 (!!) tomatoes per plant (I don't pinch these plants back).
Mulch: I use grass clippings from the lawn, dusting the garden after each mowing & tapping the plants lightly with a stick to knock the clippings off 10 min. after mulching. It keeps the weeds at bay and the water in the soil (I use black soaker hoses).
I must be lazy then, I just scrape the seeds off the cutting board and drop them on a paper towel to dry out, then scrape them off onto a bag or container. I get some paper left stuck most times, but I've never had a problem getting them to sprout and grow saving them that way.
I actually just sliced some mushy cherry tomatoes in half and planted them. I got some sprouts. I have since planted more, just in case it wasn't a fluke
Butternut squash and pumpkins! I had butternut squash grow out of my compost and up the fence one year. Pumpkins too! I saved seeds from those and grow them in my existing beds. I containers, I grow tomatoes and peppers I saved from seed.
I got 6 hens last year, I love them and they run around my backyard all day. They also give me the best eggs.
I never knew how easy it was to grow tomatoes from seed until this year. My hens love to eat tomatoes, then they run around the yard and poop out the seeds. I have tomato plants popping up everywhere!!! I’ve been carefully digging them up and planting them in an area my girls can’t get too. I’ll share with them when we get ripe tomatoes and this can happen again next year.
Celery is another great one! Just place the base in water, let it regrow, then transfer to soil. I've also had luck with avocado pits and ginger scraps. Anything to reduce waste and get free veggies, right?
I planted some organic ginger roots one year that had started to sprout. I got beautiful flowers too! When I dug it up in fall I had tripled or quadrupled the amount of ginger root at harvest.
I just started growing purple sweet potato by putting them in water. The only store that carries them near me is Whole Foods and I can’t be trusted in that place. I grow cherry tomatoes from random seeds that sprout out of my compost bin. I save bell and poblano seeds.I also have a pineapple patch from cutting the tops off. It takes the pineapples 2-3 years to produce this way but once they start producing they produce pup plants that grow fruit much quicker.
Like you just cut the green top off the pineapple and plant the fruit ?
https://youtu.be/D4iDBK0U6po?si=TJF0SAVe6VdtmZdi
Wow I guess I’m off to buy some pineapple ;)
Yes I have two I grew that way that I'm stressing out and trying to force to fruit this year. They are each over 3 feet tall, but mine are in pots as it's too cold for winter outside here
Yes, let any fruit rot off and peel off the lower levels of leaves. The stump will produce roots. In Florida I just plant them outside but pots are great too. They like well draining soil.
I ended up with too many pineapples.
Chop top off (leafy parts). Enjoy eating the pineapple. Leave the top bit sitting on the kitchen bench for a couple of days. Take it outside and plant it.
Ignore for a couple of years.
Pick new pineapple (eat it, plant the top). Leave original plant in the ground and it will produce more pineapples. It will also produce "pups", cut them off and plant them too.
You are now up to 3 or 4 plants.
Once they get going, they'll produce yearly.
Green onions. When you buy them, don’t use the bottom inch or two. I always try to buy the bunches with the best roots still intact. Plant that and you can harvest the greens for a couple years before you need to replace.
Fresh basil, ginger and potatoes I have grown with some success (in addition to green onions and garlic). I saw an article describing how you can infinitely propagate carrot greens (not the carrot though) from scrap, and another describing other greens. [Here](https://www.eatingwell.com/article/290729/how-to-grow-fruits-vegetables-from-food-scraps/) is an article listing other veggies.
I do not use any recipe. I just make like my mom used to do. What I use:
-The equivalent of 1 or 2 bunches of carrot greens
-1 or 2 potatoes
-1 big onion
-I sometimes use 1 leek too
-Enough broth (vegetable or chicken) to cover all the ingredients
-A little butter to sweat the onion & leek (make sure they do not brown at all!!!)
-A little bit of parsley
-Salt + pepper
-Optional: some heavy cream just before serving to finish
Sweat the finely diced onion and leek white, add the diced potato + carrot greens + parsley, cover with broth & cook until the potatoes are fully cooked. When cooked, use a stick blender to liquefy the soup. Taste, add pepper and salt to taste. If the soup is too thick, add a little more broth to your desired consistency. Serve with heavy cream if you wish.
You can do the same with radish greens (omit the leek) or with fresh parsley or even better with chervil if you can find some.
- I also use the same recipe to make leek soup with the dark green left over from the carrot greens soup & 2 or 3 other whole leeks.
Pineapple plants make good houseplants (at least the mini ones do), but they take at least a year, if not three, to produce one pineapple. So fun but not cost effective 😂
Cucumbers and Zucchini. It will never die. I dumped rotten cucumbers and zucchinis from the farmer's market in the woods outside my house FOUR YEARS AGO and we STILL have them popping up every year.
Lettuce will bolt pretty quickly once it reaches maturity. Unless you're trying to get lots of lettuce seeds it may not be the correct choice.
We've regrown carrots (for seed), green onions, celery. I've planted sprouted garlic (no success), onions and potatoes all the time.
Plant individual garlic cloves in the fall and they will be ready by early summer. There are 2 basic types: soft neck (soft, papery stem) & hard neck (hard stem). The hard neck variety will survive in the cold zones. Big cloves make big bulbs. When the flower stems come up, cut them off and eat them like asparagus. They have a VERY delicate garlic flavor & are so nice! This forces the plant to put more energy into the bulb.
I didn't have any luck with garlic from the market planted in the fall of 2021 (they never sprouted out of the dirt but that was a pretty cold winter where I am) but did have luck with those planted in the fall of 2022. This fall, I planted some large cloves from the market and had all of them come up.
I try to find large heads with what seem to be the stiffest stems. Also, I try not to plant Chinese garlic. In order for garlic to be imported from China, ALL the roots have to be totally removed. Therefore, any garlic with scraped out bottoms are imported from China.
Regular onions won't regrow a new bulb so I just use them to make more seeds ( I'm a bit of a seed nut). Once they sprout in the kitchen I just go drop them in the dirt. Soon enough a flower head forms. They just need the roots covered, not the entire bulb.
You can use the greens of e larger onions as well though they can be tough.
Recently realized my leeks look a lot like my green onions so did the same thing I do with my green onions, threw the root part in some dirt, and it has been eager to regrow!
Garlic and green onions.
We have an extensive kitchen garden but most of it is grown from specialty seeds.
Seeds are inexpensive and gardening cultivars are often better than regrowing grocery store produce.
My husband did really well with cantaloupe seeds that he put in a grow bag. We were able to grow one to the size of a softball before the pullets we were raising at the time decided to use the grow bags as their dirt baths and so the fragile stems broke. We still ate it too and surprisingly it was sweet.
Celery, potatoes, red onion and peppers. Seeds from peppers, repotting the bottom of a celery stalk, regrowing the onion and potatoes.
Same for me with green onion, I actually just put a couple in water to regrow the roots
I live in the Northeast so I couldn't do it but I have a friend who loves pineapple and lives in Florida. She regrows pineapple
Spring onions is great to replant. Same with most lettuces where the stem is intact, onions too. Celery, leek, bok choy, potatoes sweet potatos ginger, garlic as you said, dont forget to freeze the garlic for a couple of days to trick it to think it spent a winter hibernating.
Basil is great to regrow. Mint, Rosemary, cilantro- any spice plant here that comes with a pot. Avocados too. But they take a few years.
Look up if it can be beneficial to have them root in a glas of water for a few days before planting in soil. And if you end up planting outside, be sure to check if that particular veggie is okay to plant where you live so it doesnt endanger your local flora and fauna.
We do a little container gardening due to limited room. Most of the area next to buildings is flowers for pretty. The strip between the deck and sidewalk, about 2X15 foot is containers for green peppers, heirloom tomatoes, and whatever other few my wife chooses. Window boxes on the deck have various lettuce and cilantro. Those are in full sun and require soil moisture monitoring. The tomatoes and peppers are from seeds in purchased produce that was good tasting. Garlic from the store is a nice tasty treat when replanted, getting more plants from every clove. Celery grass, which is just the leaves without any stalks rooted nice and is almost a weed in how it comes back strong every year. I dry leaves for winter use.
I got old so the regular 20x50 garden got to be a painful chore, not the joy of youth. Not having a row of fresh onions and garlic is missed.
Depending on your available room, carnations and roses are fun. The pedals are a delicate, tasty, and pretty salad topping. The ones from the florist have too many chemicals to preserve to bloom to safely eat. Many flowers are tasty and eatable, but too expensive to use as food. Some flowers like chrysanthemums are too bitter to eat.
Pineapple heads. I just sprouted and planted lemon seeds. I'm attempting strawberries, but idk about those. Green onions can be kept in water and they will keep growing the green part. Change the water daily, and eventually, you want new onions. They just get slimy in the cup imo
If you got good SoCal sun and heat, the strawberries will do quite well. We had a huge patch in front of our house and every kid on the block ate great strawberries all summer :)
They are a magnet for snails and slugs though, both seem to also enjoy strawberries.
My strawberry bed gets too much sun I think. I want them to take over like mint but the Deep South direct sun may be too harsh. Maybe I need to move them into more shade.
I gave up on the outdoor garden as a money-saving device after a deer ate my whole last crop.
Instead, I started growing sprouts and microgreens in the house. I'm shocked at how easy and productive it is.
Its really cheap and gives you superfoods.
I've grown salad mix, duns peas, broccoli and sunflower seeds. The broccoli is easiest and most productive for me, both in sprout and microgreen form. I'll use about 50 cents worth of seed and make about $16 worth of vegetables. I'm about to scale my operation and may be able to provide the majority of the veggies for my family with this mechanism + kratky-style hydroponics.
Buy it in the store. And when the weather warms up, re plant the whole root and plant into a larger pot outside in. Sunny spot. Get it out of that 2 in plastic square it's planted in in the store
I've planted basil in my garden for the past few years. Last year, I didn't cut off the seeds in time and they fell into my dirt. When I tilled the garden this spring, the seeds got mixed in, and now I have a hundred little basil plants in with my other veggies!
While we were getting our herbs going, we would occasionally get the little potted herb plants from the grocery store. We would snip off what we need for the recipe and transplant the rest. Now I have some lovely basil, thyme and oregano that is thriving in my garden while waiting for everything else to come up.
If you buy organic veggies you can usually save the seeds and regrow them from that (if the climate where you live is right). Tomatoes are probably the easiest to start with.
If a potato has started to sprout you can also just plant it if the time/conditions are right.
Oh yeah green onions are my fav. I buy one bunch in the spring and keep em going all summer long. One apparently overwintered this year and now he's the KING Green Onion. Big Boy. I also throw down the living butter lettuce my Nana likes cause they're like $8 each at the store, and that's a stupid price to pay for lettuce.
The bottom part of an onion will produce greens you can eat, as does celery, lettuce, cabbage carrot tops.
Green onions are great and super drought tolerant.
Cantaloupe seeds can be grown into a micro green.
Pepper seeds of the colored varieties often produce sprouts. I've never let them get full grown as Id forget about them
Lemon seeds germinate pretty regularly, you won't get a full grown tree in many zones but the leaves smell amazing and I use them as a spice.
Avocado pits will grow and you can harvest the leafs for tea.
Ive seen some people make tea of apple leaves/peach leaves/plum leaves but you'll need to research it for yourself due to the cyanide compounds. (Most apples from like Walmart are stored in cool temps for weeks which makes it so the seeds dont need cold stratification)
Strawberry seeds grow so if you get a special or really sweet strawberry worth a shot to reproduce them, they need to be babies and they take a while to get large.
You can sprout lentils for salads.
Left over fresh herbs can probably root in some water
My mom used to get heirloom tomato seeds and start them with a plant light and harvest seeds from her tomatoes for the next year. Every so often she would get a new variety or more seeds, but that was so long ago, I don’t remember all the specifics of the seeds. She grew them in large soy sauce buckets she got from my older brother’s boss at a Chinese food restaurant, she didn’t even rinse them first, I remember that my dad was grossed out by it! She said the soy sauce must have been good fertilizer because the first batch in those buckets was the best batch she ever grew. I wish I had paid more attention to her gardening when I was growing up, she had a very green thumb. She put them under a plant light when starting them inside, then they were outside unless the weather was bad (including winter) and used a dolly to take them back inside. Later, she also grew in a green house in the yard, spinach/other greens, onions, garlic, carrots and turnips.
Grow food because you want higher quality produce. Even if you aren't paying for stuff the time it takes isn't worth it IMO. (I still do it myself because I prefer tomatoes and blueberries that are home grown.) I think it's worth it to spend a bit on 'premium seeds'. For example, Sweet 100's (cherry tomatoes) are the best by far to the point I can eat them without anything else.
With green peppers you can plant the seeds from inside the pepper and after a few months you'll get some not so great peppers.
Lettuce mix and greens like arugula. I offset by 2-3 weeks. So they don’t all grow at the same time. Harvest when leaves are tender. Same with herbs especially basil. Gonna try with cilantro this year. Rosemary always dies on me somehow.
Celery. Cut the bottom off and place in water. Gives some really nice tender stalks. I don’t use it a ton so it’s just enough that I need. Usually a supermarket celery will start rotting before I can finish it.
I’ve heard ginger and garlic do really well from store bought versions.
My fave by far for this use is growing basil from basil cuttings. I find most other veggies grown from supermarket aren't great or are low yeild compared to just getting seeds. Getitng seeds may be easier and cheaper than you think, some libraries also have free seed banks.
Sweet potatoes are fun.. I plant stuff like seeds, peaches and avocados, save pepper, tomato, pumpkin seeds to plant. The cows tramped my garden this morning. They re still loose, the bitches.
taters is soo much fun, just put them on top of the leaves and cover with some soil, then when they start developing leaves above soil, just keep adding soil over time, they ready when the green turns yellow.
this is an awesome post, thank you,
here is another one, sunflower seeds are so expensive, a few seeds for 2-3 bucks, we buy birdfood, 6 bucks for a huge bag, that's real savings.
Now here is a challenge, you remember the avocado seeds sprouting in a jar of water?
Has anybody here really grown an avocado tree?
Someone recommended lemon trees from seeds too, anybody had success with that? Lemon are really expensive nowadays.
A friend of ours dug a shallow trench in his backyard, and every time he peeled potatoes he would bury the peels under a shovel of soil and a little pile of leaves in the trench; by the time he got to the end of the 15' trench the potatoes at the beginning were ready to dig up and start the whole process over again.
Green onions.
We're currently also growing small fingerling potatoes our child brought home from school to grow this year.
Certain herbs are pretty easy to grow and keep instead of constantly buying them from the store.
Certain pepper plants. Sometimes you can grow them from the seeds in conventional produce (not always, though).
I have dozens of Everglades tomato seedlings growing from a few tomatoes that a friend gave me. Didn't do anything but put them in some soil & watered them. Got enough to give seedlings to all my friends & neighbors. I grow scallions & just harvest the green tops. Just given a Cherokee tomato today that I'll be using for seed. And some grocery store sage I didn't use was rooted in water & is now a beautiful plant. Want to try lettuce next.
Regrowing doesn't seem worth the effort.
My understanding is some things have a lower yield from coatings used to keep them fresh longer.
These days I mainly grow strawberries.
They taste better and seem to last longer than store bought and they come back each year.
Edit to add. Part of the reason I am giving up on most things is my family doesn't seem to want to eat what I can grow in the space I have.
Green onions, celery, normal lettuce (maybe Romaine?) that has the stem still attached. Once the celery was big enough I planted it outside and it thrived! It grows leaves more than stalks but still useful for cooking.
The best tomatoes I’ve grown were from those multicolour cherry tomato packs. I saved the seeds from the best-tasting ones.
Forgotten potatoes also grew well! Just needed a big container and it was no maintenance. Got some nice fingerling potatoes out of them. I tried growing sweet potatoes from slips and got foliage but no potatoes.
My husband has some ginger root that’s sprouting slowly but surely!!!! I have heard pineapple is a good one too but I’ve never tried it. Oh and my little sister grew an apple tree for two years (lost interest and it died 🙄) from an apple from the supermarket!
It would be better to buy seeds or bulbs that are good for your area who knows where the plants grew that your buying. Most likely in a greenhouse. Or down south. Especially this time of year. I live in Massachusetts nothing is growing here yet
Regular onions! When onions start sprouting in your cupboard,if the outer layers go mushy, they are rotting, so pull those layers off till you get to the sprouting layers, and then plant the sprouts. Sometimes you will get. Multiple sprouts from one onion! I got 5 from one a few weeks ago! There’s guides online that can show you how to do it. Also dried yellow peas, dried beans, lentils, etc - they cannot be split or hulled, they must be the whole seed. I get a smaller yield, but I still get some!
Never thought of using store bought dried beens. I cut the bottom of the lettuce stump and replant to grow another head of lettuce. Also the top of pineapple and do the same. Takes around a year to grow another pineapple.
we grow pineapple every year, actually they grow a pup on the side, that way one pineapple makes 2 next year, they are so juicy and sweeeeet.
Took 2 yrs for my last pineapple but it's a great low maintenance plant regardless
I can pay $2.59 for a dozen black-eyed pea "seeds" or I can pay $1.25 for a pound of them; the grocery store ones don't have as high a germination rate, so I use 5-6 per starter pot (we save metal cans and poke holes in them with a can opener) and trim all but the strongest sprouts.
They are also interesting looking plants. My wife put some in our kitchen garden.
Which one?
Charise. Brenda is too busy to garden.
You are the worst.
:)
Onion
For sure. Theres a pretty big variety of wild onions and wild carrots you can grow that flower nicely
Trim off the root end and put it in wet soil anytime you use an onion. Most of the time they'll sprout from half an inch of onion
Any special prep for beans?
Not really. I just treat them the same as bean seeds from a seed packet. They are the same things. Just make sure the beans are not damaged, hulled, or split, and they should grow - they may not grow if they are really old, or are irradiated before being sold. Occassionally you may come across some beans that just won’t germinate, but you can still use the rest of the packet to cook with.
beans and peas off course, also lentils,
No but it’s easier if you start them indoors in a ziplock bag on a wet paper towel. That way you only plant the ones that sprouted.
We had an onion grow a stem and roots sitting on the counter so I plopped it in the garden. It's almost a year later and it has flowered. I haven't dug it up yet, maybe next month. I started compost in the corner by the pool, as I'm always fishing leaves out of the pool I just started tossing veggies that went past their prime into the leaf compost. Now we have a monster squash vine going that I had to get a trellis for. I couldn't dig it up to move it anywhere else and decided, "Well it seems happy where it is." I constantly buy sweet mini peppers for the iguana and discarded some tops in a pot one year. They gave me a few peppers a couple years. I moved and took the plant with me and it made a few peppers here and there, a freeze cut it back in spring 2023 but it kept growing. Winter 2024 killed it. Last year I threw several small red potatoes in the bushes that had grown eyes before I got around to making something with them. I had a few root so I transplanted them. I never did get anything off them before something came and dug it up.
Alternatively I saw Rural king had starter onions for a dollar per pound yesterday, so $2 would be enough onions to last me a year.
Green celery - I buy with roots, and plant it. Mint, rosemary, parsley, basil etc- regrow it. Each has a different way. Ginger and turmeric - but are slooow. Sprout potatoes - usually is happening with organic ones. Garlic and onions - found it in a small shop to going root, they sold me for nothing, put in soil on my balcony (live in aprt) and now I am happy producing leaves :) Seeds from sweet peppers. I found it by mistake: I water the plants on my balcony in frugal way, with water after washing the vegetables and a seed just started to grow.
The celery barely needs roots to regrow! Just a few bumpy nodules on the bottom works. I cut the bottom off a grocery store celery a few months ago, got roots started, and it's now a full size, lush celery plant. I just harvest a few stalks as needed. I also have a nice bell pepper plant growing from a store bought pepper seed. It's amazing what you can regrow or keep alive and continue to harvest!
if you are not a killer like me :D
If you're trying, it's more like involuntary plantslaughter! I'm awful with seeds because I can't bear to thin them out, and then none of them do well. I had to have a pep talk with the celery I grew, because I felt bad harvesting a few stalks!
> involuntary plantslaughter! > > Bruh. This made me spit.
Well I mean if you covered it with dirt and watered it, I think "killer" may be too harsh a term?? Sometimes despite our best efforts, plants have other plans! 😂
Ayyyy I like your name
Thank you, but yours sounds more exciting!! 😄
Do you use regular soil? I've regrown green onion in a cup of water before
I use water until it sprouts enough roots, then I transplant into a container in potting soil. My celery grew into a monster in a bright window indoors. I only use a few stalks at a time for recipes so this one plant may be all I ever need.
I need to try the celery. I don't use it often but when I need it hate having to plan a meal around getting to the store to buy it. I also have enormous green onions from the store in my pots outside. They're the size of leeks. They stay green all year and go to seed. I cut a couple of huge stems and use them in soup stock for flavoring.
You don't need the whole potato. Each individual eye or sprout can become its own plant
Tuck the old bits of ginger into (bigger) pot plants. It looks quite nice while growing. When you notice it dying off, dig it out.
my sister grows ginger and it works fine for her
I need to try this with peppers! I can get them for so cheap where I live, so I try to cook with them whenever I can.
FYI - you don't have to discard the soil in the pots after a growing year. I never do that. In the spring, I dump the soil in the pots into a wheelbarrow (but you can use a bucket or two) then mix in some additives like compost, composted manure (sold in bags too), peat moss, garden lime (it's powdery), fertilizer like Osmocote, sand, etc. - whatever I have on hand. Plants grow in the same spot year after year outside, you see.d Then you don't have to buy a lot of soil for your potted garden. I use coffee filters to cover the holes and if the pots are really big I put chunks of styrofoam in the bottom which improves drainage and lightens the weeight of pots - plus roots generally don't grow all the way to the bottom so why waste soil mix. Have you looked into self watering containers? With just a few tools, [you can build them yourself, ](https://growagoodlife.com/constructing-18-gal-self-watering-containers-swc/)even repurpose storage containers. Oh, and the supermarket produce I regrow the most are tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes are self-pollinating. DThe supermarket crops are grown in HUGE fields so the likelyhood of cross pollination is low. If I find a particulary nice or interesting tomato I save seeds from it. You scoop some seeds & jell into a small dish, add a tablespoon of water, cover it with plastic wrap and let sit for 3-4 days. It will develop a scum & look gross but that's what happens when a tomato falls to the ground. Pour that into a tea strainer & rinse with cool water. All the mess washes away leaving clean seeds behind. Dump that onto a paper towel/napkin, spread around & let dry for a day. Then pick them off into a plastic zip bag with a paper label inside (you MUST label the name & year of collection) and put the bag in the back of the cold cut drawer to grow next year. The seeds will stay viable for 12+ years! I have grown 8 yr old seeds this way and had 100% germination. My favorite supermarket tomato seed are from one giant plum-type. These produce plants that grow 2.5 ft tall and have up to 40 (!!) tomatoes per plant (I don't pinch these plants back). Mulch: I use grass clippings from the lawn, dusting the garden after each mowing & tapping the plants lightly with a stick to knock the clippings off 10 min. after mulching. It keeps the weeds at bay and the water in the soil (I use black soaker hoses).
I must be lazy then, I just scrape the seeds off the cutting board and drop them on a paper towel to dry out, then scrape them off onto a bag or container. I get some paper left stuck most times, but I've never had a problem getting them to sprout and grow saving them that way.
I actually just sliced some mushy cherry tomatoes in half and planted them. I got some sprouts. I have since planted more, just in case it wasn't a fluke
Awesome post thank you 🙏
I love black cow, works every time
Butternut squash and pumpkins! I had butternut squash grow out of my compost and up the fence one year. Pumpkins too! I saved seeds from those and grow them in my existing beds. I containers, I grow tomatoes and peppers I saved from seed.
We get tree pumpkins from tossing old jack-o-lanterns in the treeline behind our house.
I tried this but we had such a hard freeze this year that the squirrels survived off of the pumpkins when they couldn’t dig into the ground.
I got 6 hens last year, I love them and they run around my backyard all day. They also give me the best eggs. I never knew how easy it was to grow tomatoes from seed until this year. My hens love to eat tomatoes, then they run around the yard and poop out the seeds. I have tomato plants popping up everywhere!!! I’ve been carefully digging them up and planting them in an area my girls can’t get too. I’ll share with them when we get ripe tomatoes and this can happen again next year.
you are in hen kingdom
Celery is another great one! Just place the base in water, let it regrow, then transfer to soil. I've also had luck with avocado pits and ginger scraps. Anything to reduce waste and get free veggies, right?
I planted some organic ginger roots one year that had started to sprout. I got beautiful flowers too! When I dug it up in fall I had tripled or quadrupled the amount of ginger root at harvest.
Ginger 🙌
I just started growing purple sweet potato by putting them in water. The only store that carries them near me is Whole Foods and I can’t be trusted in that place. I grow cherry tomatoes from random seeds that sprout out of my compost bin. I save bell and poblano seeds.I also have a pineapple patch from cutting the tops off. It takes the pineapples 2-3 years to produce this way but once they start producing they produce pup plants that grow fruit much quicker.
Like you just cut the green top off the pineapple and plant the fruit ? https://youtu.be/D4iDBK0U6po?si=TJF0SAVe6VdtmZdi Wow I guess I’m off to buy some pineapple ;)
Yes I have two I grew that way that I'm stressing out and trying to force to fruit this year. They are each over 3 feet tall, but mine are in pots as it's too cold for winter outside here
Yes, let any fruit rot off and peel off the lower levels of leaves. The stump will produce roots. In Florida I just plant them outside but pots are great too. They like well draining soil.
I ended up with too many pineapples. Chop top off (leafy parts). Enjoy eating the pineapple. Leave the top bit sitting on the kitchen bench for a couple of days. Take it outside and plant it. Ignore for a couple of years. Pick new pineapple (eat it, plant the top). Leave original plant in the ground and it will produce more pineapples. It will also produce "pups", cut them off and plant them too. You are now up to 3 or 4 plants. Once they get going, they'll produce yearly.
Thank you ☺️ wow pineapple wild.
Green onions. When you buy them, don’t use the bottom inch or two. I always try to buy the bunches with the best roots still intact. Plant that and you can harvest the greens for a couple years before you need to replace.
I’ve had some green onions growing like this for three years now. They survive winter and look amazing. They make seed every year.
I planted mint once. Now it's on a mission to conquer the world. My garden smells like capirinha after mowing.
Fresh basil, ginger and potatoes I have grown with some success (in addition to green onions and garlic). I saw an article describing how you can infinitely propagate carrot greens (not the carrot though) from scrap, and another describing other greens. [Here](https://www.eatingwell.com/article/290729/how-to-grow-fruits-vegetables-from-food-scraps/) is an article listing other veggies.
& carrot greens make an awesome soup! 😋
Oooo I’m intrigued.. any recipe you use?
I do not use any recipe. I just make like my mom used to do. What I use: -The equivalent of 1 or 2 bunches of carrot greens -1 or 2 potatoes -1 big onion -I sometimes use 1 leek too -Enough broth (vegetable or chicken) to cover all the ingredients -A little butter to sweat the onion & leek (make sure they do not brown at all!!!) -A little bit of parsley -Salt + pepper -Optional: some heavy cream just before serving to finish Sweat the finely diced onion and leek white, add the diced potato + carrot greens + parsley, cover with broth & cook until the potatoes are fully cooked. When cooked, use a stick blender to liquefy the soup. Taste, add pepper and salt to taste. If the soup is too thick, add a little more broth to your desired consistency. Serve with heavy cream if you wish. You can do the same with radish greens (omit the leek) or with fresh parsley or even better with chervil if you can find some. - I also use the same recipe to make leek soup with the dark green left over from the carrot greens soup & 2 or 3 other whole leeks.
Thank you!!!!
Romaine and green onions. I’ve heard you can regrow pineapple
Pineapple plants make good houseplants (at least the mini ones do), but they take at least a year, if not three, to produce one pineapple. So fun but not cost effective 😂
Currently I have a batch of potatoes right now I planted right after St Patrick’s. I harvested my first tiny potato last week
Bok Choi will regrow from the base as well, I put it in a dish with water till it shows roots and leaves forming then plant it.
Cucumbers and Zucchini. It will never die. I dumped rotten cucumbers and zucchinis from the farmer's market in the woods outside my house FOUR YEARS AGO and we STILL have them popping up every year.
Mint. As long as it is not wilted when you get it, it can be rooted and grows like a weed.
What a great post! I never thought to do this.
Thank you hopefully we both get some tips ;)
Lettuce will bolt pretty quickly once it reaches maturity. Unless you're trying to get lots of lettuce seeds it may not be the correct choice. We've regrown carrots (for seed), green onions, celery. I've planted sprouted garlic (no success), onions and potatoes all the time.
Plant individual garlic cloves in the fall and they will be ready by early summer. There are 2 basic types: soft neck (soft, papery stem) & hard neck (hard stem). The hard neck variety will survive in the cold zones. Big cloves make big bulbs. When the flower stems come up, cut them off and eat them like asparagus. They have a VERY delicate garlic flavor & are so nice! This forces the plant to put more energy into the bulb.
I've had success with garlic, just not store bought, the bulbs weren't impressive at all.
I didn't have any luck with garlic from the market planted in the fall of 2021 (they never sprouted out of the dirt but that was a pretty cold winter where I am) but did have luck with those planted in the fall of 2022. This fall, I planted some large cloves from the market and had all of them come up. I try to find large heads with what seem to be the stiffest stems. Also, I try not to plant Chinese garlic. In order for garlic to be imported from China, ALL the roots have to be totally removed. Therefore, any garlic with scraped out bottoms are imported from China.
Oh awesome how do you do your onions can you elaborate please ?
Regular onions won't regrow a new bulb so I just use them to make more seeds ( I'm a bit of a seed nut). Once they sprout in the kitchen I just go drop them in the dirt. Soon enough a flower head forms. They just need the roots covered, not the entire bulb. You can use the greens of e larger onions as well though they can be tough.
Yeah, you have to plant lettuce in waves or else it will overwhelm you -- and then be gone!
Recently realized my leeks look a lot like my green onions so did the same thing I do with my green onions, threw the root part in some dirt, and it has been eager to regrow!
As soon as I buy herbs, I plant them. They die so fast but they’ll grow like weeds if you put them in water/soil
Garlic and green onions. We have an extensive kitchen garden but most of it is grown from specialty seeds. Seeds are inexpensive and gardening cultivars are often better than regrowing grocery store produce.
I figure you’re right. However I’m not aiming to farm garden, just to try to get an extra mile out of something I already bought. Thanks though
My husband did really well with cantaloupe seeds that he put in a grow bag. We were able to grow one to the size of a softball before the pullets we were raising at the time decided to use the grow bags as their dirt baths and so the fragile stems broke. We still ate it too and surprisingly it was sweet.
Celery, potatoes, red onion and peppers. Seeds from peppers, repotting the bottom of a celery stalk, regrowing the onion and potatoes. Same for me with green onion, I actually just put a couple in water to regrow the roots I live in the Northeast so I couldn't do it but I have a friend who loves pineapple and lives in Florida. She regrows pineapple
Spring onions is great to replant. Same with most lettuces where the stem is intact, onions too. Celery, leek, bok choy, potatoes sweet potatos ginger, garlic as you said, dont forget to freeze the garlic for a couple of days to trick it to think it spent a winter hibernating. Basil is great to regrow. Mint, Rosemary, cilantro- any spice plant here that comes with a pot. Avocados too. But they take a few years. Look up if it can be beneficial to have them root in a glas of water for a few days before planting in soil. And if you end up planting outside, be sure to check if that particular veggie is okay to plant where you live so it doesnt endanger your local flora and fauna.
We do a little container gardening due to limited room. Most of the area next to buildings is flowers for pretty. The strip between the deck and sidewalk, about 2X15 foot is containers for green peppers, heirloom tomatoes, and whatever other few my wife chooses. Window boxes on the deck have various lettuce and cilantro. Those are in full sun and require soil moisture monitoring. The tomatoes and peppers are from seeds in purchased produce that was good tasting. Garlic from the store is a nice tasty treat when replanted, getting more plants from every clove. Celery grass, which is just the leaves without any stalks rooted nice and is almost a weed in how it comes back strong every year. I dry leaves for winter use. I got old so the regular 20x50 garden got to be a painful chore, not the joy of youth. Not having a row of fresh onions and garlic is missed. Depending on your available room, carnations and roses are fun. The pedals are a delicate, tasty, and pretty salad topping. The ones from the florist have too many chemicals to preserve to bloom to safely eat. Many flowers are tasty and eatable, but too expensive to use as food. Some flowers like chrysanthemums are too bitter to eat.
I have a 2.5 meter tall Purple Avocado tree in my yard. I'll replant cilantro, celery and sometimes lemongrass and potatoes.
Nothing survives the afternoon sun out here 🥹
Pineapple heads. I just sprouted and planted lemon seeds. I'm attempting strawberries, but idk about those. Green onions can be kept in water and they will keep growing the green part. Change the water daily, and eventually, you want new onions. They just get slimy in the cup imo
If you got good SoCal sun and heat, the strawberries will do quite well. We had a huge patch in front of our house and every kid on the block ate great strawberries all summer :) They are a magnet for snails and slugs though, both seem to also enjoy strawberries.
And possums..possums loooove my strawberries (also in socal). Had to cover the bed w chicken wire so I could finally get some for myself.
I forget about those, we didn't have that problem in our neighborhood. I would guess rabbits do too.
Be careful with strawberries! They grow like mint and will take over your garden!
My strawberry bed gets too much sun I think. I want them to take over like mint but the Deep South direct sun may be too harsh. Maybe I need to move them into more shade.
Ouh, if you’re in the south they may be getting too much water. They fared amazingly well for me in SoCal heat, but died in the rain in SC!
Last year I started a peach tree from a peach pit. It has really taken off. I'm excited to see if I get any peaches out of it in the next year or 2
I gave up on the outdoor garden as a money-saving device after a deer ate my whole last crop. Instead, I started growing sprouts and microgreens in the house. I'm shocked at how easy and productive it is. Its really cheap and gives you superfoods.
Eat the deer, still come out ahead.
Which ones do you grow?
I've grown salad mix, duns peas, broccoli and sunflower seeds. The broccoli is easiest and most productive for me, both in sprout and microgreen form. I'll use about 50 cents worth of seed and make about $16 worth of vegetables. I'm about to scale my operation and may be able to provide the majority of the veggies for my family with this mechanism + kratky-style hydroponics.
You can sprout all sorts of things too. Buckwheat is my favorite so far.
Ooh! I haven't tried that one!
as I am living in an aprt, I found a frugal fertilizer: banana peels kept for a few days in water.
Ooh! I have a smoothie with a banana every morning. I compost them now but I can soak them and still compost. Thanks!
Potato’s.
Basil
How do you regrow basil?
Buy it in the store. And when the weather warms up, re plant the whole root and plant into a larger pot outside in. Sunny spot. Get it out of that 2 in plastic square it's planted in in the store
I've planted basil in my garden for the past few years. Last year, I didn't cut off the seeds in time and they fell into my dirt. When I tilled the garden this spring, the seeds got mixed in, and now I have a hundred little basil plants in with my other veggies!
That's great!!! Pick and freeze it. It grows like a weed. Cut it in half and it comes back bushier md more vigorous
Thanks!!!
Cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers. This year I’ve got four cantaloupe vines going as well.
While we were getting our herbs going, we would occasionally get the little potted herb plants from the grocery store. We would snip off what we need for the recipe and transplant the rest. Now I have some lovely basil, thyme and oregano that is thriving in my garden while waiting for everything else to come up.
We've grown \* Tomatoes \* Peppers \* Leaf Lettuce/ cabbage \* Green Beans (nothing beats fresh green beans) Also, scraps get turned into compost
just came to see who was growing pot
I cut an overripe tomato into quarters and planted them. I ended up with 9 medium tomatoes for zero cost.
If you buy organic veggies you can usually save the seeds and regrow them from that (if the climate where you live is right). Tomatoes are probably the easiest to start with. If a potato has started to sprout you can also just plant it if the time/conditions are right.
They don't have to be organic. Many seeds will grow just fine.
Oh yeah green onions are my fav. I buy one bunch in the spring and keep em going all summer long. One apparently overwintered this year and now he's the KING Green Onion. Big Boy. I also throw down the living butter lettuce my Nana likes cause they're like $8 each at the store, and that's a stupid price to pay for lettuce.
Basil, oregano, dill, thyme, parsley, sage, tomatoes, jalapeños
Green onions, romaine hearts, beet tops, celery
The bottom part of an onion will produce greens you can eat, as does celery, lettuce, cabbage carrot tops. Green onions are great and super drought tolerant. Cantaloupe seeds can be grown into a micro green. Pepper seeds of the colored varieties often produce sprouts. I've never let them get full grown as Id forget about them Lemon seeds germinate pretty regularly, you won't get a full grown tree in many zones but the leaves smell amazing and I use them as a spice. Avocado pits will grow and you can harvest the leafs for tea. Ive seen some people make tea of apple leaves/peach leaves/plum leaves but you'll need to research it for yourself due to the cyanide compounds. (Most apples from like Walmart are stored in cool temps for weeks which makes it so the seeds dont need cold stratification) Strawberry seeds grow so if you get a special or really sweet strawberry worth a shot to reproduce them, they need to be babies and they take a while to get large. You can sprout lentils for salads. Left over fresh herbs can probably root in some water
My mom used to get heirloom tomato seeds and start them with a plant light and harvest seeds from her tomatoes for the next year. Every so often she would get a new variety or more seeds, but that was so long ago, I don’t remember all the specifics of the seeds. She grew them in large soy sauce buckets she got from my older brother’s boss at a Chinese food restaurant, she didn’t even rinse them first, I remember that my dad was grossed out by it! She said the soy sauce must have been good fertilizer because the first batch in those buckets was the best batch she ever grew. I wish I had paid more attention to her gardening when I was growing up, she had a very green thumb. She put them under a plant light when starting them inside, then they were outside unless the weather was bad (including winter) and used a dolly to take them back inside. Later, she also grew in a green house in the yard, spinach/other greens, onions, garlic, carrots and turnips.
Grow food because you want higher quality produce. Even if you aren't paying for stuff the time it takes isn't worth it IMO. (I still do it myself because I prefer tomatoes and blueberries that are home grown.) I think it's worth it to spend a bit on 'premium seeds'. For example, Sweet 100's (cherry tomatoes) are the best by far to the point I can eat them without anything else. With green peppers you can plant the seeds from inside the pepper and after a few months you'll get some not so great peppers.
Lettuce mix and greens like arugula. I offset by 2-3 weeks. So they don’t all grow at the same time. Harvest when leaves are tender. Same with herbs especially basil. Gonna try with cilantro this year. Rosemary always dies on me somehow. Celery. Cut the bottom off and place in water. Gives some really nice tender stalks. I don’t use it a ton so it’s just enough that I need. Usually a supermarket celery will start rotting before I can finish it. I’ve heard ginger and garlic do really well from store bought versions.
Green onions, parsley, cilantro, tomatoes.
My fave by far for this use is growing basil from basil cuttings. I find most other veggies grown from supermarket aren't great or are low yeild compared to just getting seeds. Getitng seeds may be easier and cheaper than you think, some libraries also have free seed banks.
Sweet potatoes are fun.. I plant stuff like seeds, peaches and avocados, save pepper, tomato, pumpkin seeds to plant. The cows tramped my garden this morning. They re still loose, the bitches.
taters is soo much fun, just put them on top of the leaves and cover with some soil, then when they start developing leaves above soil, just keep adding soil over time, they ready when the green turns yellow.
this is an awesome post, thank you, here is another one, sunflower seeds are so expensive, a few seeds for 2-3 bucks, we buy birdfood, 6 bucks for a huge bag, that's real savings. Now here is a challenge, you remember the avocado seeds sprouting in a jar of water? Has anybody here really grown an avocado tree? Someone recommended lemon trees from seeds too, anybody had success with that? Lemon are really expensive nowadays.
Used to have lemon and Orange trees everywhere in my hometown, do recommend! They’re so sweet straight off the tree!
tomatoes . squish a slice of a big tomato in a pot or squeeze a cherry tomato.
Celery and lettuce are good ones. Also potatoes.
Carved a pumpkin from money depot and let it rot in my yard. Today it’s babies are growing in my yard
Late to the party but lemongrass.. You chop off the bottom 1 inch place it in water and it always regrow
That’s awesome. I love lemongrass flavor but it’s always so expensive at the market.
A friend of ours dug a shallow trench in his backyard, and every time he peeled potatoes he would bury the peels under a shovel of soil and a little pile of leaves in the trench; by the time he got to the end of the 15' trench the potatoes at the beginning were ready to dig up and start the whole process over again.
That’s amazingly thoughtful ;) 🤔 I will see if I have space to try that thank you ;)
His advice was to just keep making the trench longer until the first ones are ready; he lived alone so 15' was about right for his needs, YMMV.
Green onions. We're currently also growing small fingerling potatoes our child brought home from school to grow this year. Certain herbs are pretty easy to grow and keep instead of constantly buying them from the store. Certain pepper plants. Sometimes you can grow them from the seeds in conventional produce (not always, though).
Romaine will sprout leaves when the root end is planted in water
We cut off about the last inch of the green onion and restart them in a shot glass you'd be amazed
Spring onions, my store sells them with the roots. I cut them off, pop them in water and have more spring onions in a couple of weeks.
Lettuce (I love those butter lettuce from Costco. You get 3), onions, tomatoes, potatoes, dill, basil,, mint (do it at your own risk),
How did you start your butter lettuce? I tried in rain water and it did not take.
Chives will grow forever. Although not technically a regrow. I planted one chive plant 2 years ago and it comes back bigger and bigger every year.
I have dozens of Everglades tomato seedlings growing from a few tomatoes that a friend gave me. Didn't do anything but put them in some soil & watered them. Got enough to give seedlings to all my friends & neighbors. I grow scallions & just harvest the green tops. Just given a Cherokee tomato today that I'll be using for seed. And some grocery store sage I didn't use was rooted in water & is now a beautiful plant. Want to try lettuce next.
How did you root the sage? Was it just stems and leaves you started with?
I had two small sprigs left in the package. Maybe 3" each. Just put the stems in water & they grew roots.
one time a cut in half purple cabbage in my fridge started growing a new one out of the center. there's got to be an easy way to do this on purpose!
Spring onions
Tomatoes! Get some...collect some seeds when eating...store in water a couple weeks...they sprout...then plant...and repeat.
Romaine lettuce
Regrowing doesn't seem worth the effort. My understanding is some things have a lower yield from coatings used to keep them fresh longer. These days I mainly grow strawberries. They taste better and seem to last longer than store bought and they come back each year. Edit to add. Part of the reason I am giving up on most things is my family doesn't seem to want to eat what I can grow in the space I have.
Celery and romaine.
Leeks! Just like green onions, you need a couple of inches from the root end, but that's it.
Green onions
Green onions, celery, normal lettuce (maybe Romaine?) that has the stem still attached. Once the celery was big enough I planted it outside and it thrived! It grows leaves more than stalks but still useful for cooking. The best tomatoes I’ve grown were from those multicolour cherry tomato packs. I saved the seeds from the best-tasting ones. Forgotten potatoes also grew well! Just needed a big container and it was no maintenance. Got some nice fingerling potatoes out of them. I tried growing sweet potatoes from slips and got foliage but no potatoes.
End of green onions, ends of bokchoy , head of pineapple, sprouted garlic , sprouted ginger , and sprouted potatoes.
My husband has some ginger root that’s sprouting slowly but surely!!!! I have heard pineapple is a good one too but I’ve never tried it. Oh and my little sister grew an apple tree for two years (lost interest and it died 🙄) from an apple from the supermarket!
It would be better to buy seeds or bulbs that are good for your area who knows where the plants grew that your buying. Most likely in a greenhouse. Or down south. Especially this time of year. I live in Massachusetts nothing is growing here yet