Kitchen Scrap Gardening

Kitchen scrap gardening is a fun way to get into gardening using the leftover vegetables you've already purchased from the grocery store or farmer's market. It's a creative, eco-friendly hobby, and a fun way to get outdoors.

Kitchen scrap gardening is also a great way to get kids excited and involved in gardening. It almost feels like a science experiment!

Kitchen Scrap Gardening

Here are some of our favorite things to re-grow from kitchen scraps.

Carrot Greens

Start your carrots from scraps in the early Spring for a yummy salad addition or garnish.

How: Start with carrots that have greens attached. "Behead" the top, leaving 1-2 inches of carrot, and cut off the greens. Place in a shallow dish, keeping the cut part submerged in water. After a few days, new greens and roots will start growing, and you can transfer them to soil. I keep mine inside for a little while longer, putting them out in the sun and cooler weather a few hours a day if possible before completely transferring them into the garden. These carrot greens are yummy in a salad or make a pretty garnish!

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are fun to grow for food or keep as an indoor house plant. From one sweet potato, you can get an average of over 100 potatoes! That's crazy right?!

How: Place toothpicks in a sweet potato and place in a mason jar with the pointy end up and the flat end (more blunt) suspended in the water. You'll start to get roots growing in the water and little sprouts about 2 weeks later from those roots. When the sprouts are about 5 inches tall, you can gently separate them from the potato and grow them in soil. They will mature in about 90 days, and you will get about 3-5 potatoes from each sprout you plant. Sweet potatoes really like hot weather and grow well in the Summer.

Green Onions

Green onions add a nice flavor to many dishes. You can plant and grow your own green onions and never have to buy green onions again!

How: Cut the green parts off the onion, leaving part of the white and the roots attached. Place the roots in a small cup or mason jar of water by a sunny window. Once the shoots start to grow and are a few inches long, transfer them to the garden and enjoy your green onions.

Citrus fruit.

During the winter, citrus fruits are plentiful. Save the seeds from your lemons, limes, or oranges. These will grow as a houseplant during the winter months, and you can plant it outdoors once the weather warms up or keep it indoors all winter for a fun houseplant.

How: Plant 3 or 4 seeds about 1 inch deep in a small pot. Keep soil moist and keep pot in a sunny area. The seeds should sprout in about 2-4 weeks, and after about 6 weeks, you can transfer them into bigger pots for your patio or plant them in the ground. Please note that the trees will not produce fruit for a few years. This is a slow burn process, but still fun, nonetheless.

Avocado

Growing an avocado plant has always been a hit with my kids!

How: Clean off your avocado pit the next time you make guacamole or avocado toast and save it for later. Poke three toothpicks around the middle of your avocado pit and suspend it in a shallow cup of water or mason jar so that the bottom of the avocado pit is submerged in the water. In about a month, roots and a sprout will grow. Once you feel that they are well established, you can move them to a pot with soil. You will need two avocado trees to cross-pollinate to make avocados, otherwise, you just have a fun tree.

Lettuce

You can also grow cabbage, bok choy, or celery using the same the same method bethod below!

How: Chop the bottom 2 inches off the lettuce head and place the root down in a shallow cup of water. Change the water every few days and keep an eye on them. After the new leaves get about 3-4 inches tall (usually takes about 3-4 days), you can transfer them to a pot or garden to keep growing. If you only take about 1/3 of your lettuce off the plant at a time, it will continue to grow more lettuce.

Garlic

We use garlic in so many of our dishes that I knew this was something I wanted to grow from kitchen scraps.

How: Save one or two cloves from a garlic bulb. In the garden, plant the clove about 5-6 inches in soil, and in about 6-9 months, it will grow into a full bulb of garlic that you can use, and repeat the process!

Potatoes

This one might be the best kitchen scrap garden hack.

How: Each potato has eyes on them, and every eye on a potato will create a new plant that will grow new potatoes. If you have potatoes that have sat in the pantry for too long and have sprouted, it's perfect for kitchen scrap gardening. Each spot where roots have grown will grow a new potato plant, and each plant will grow 5-8 potatoes from just one plant. Follow the similar method as sweet potoates above and enjoy your harvest!