“Do not wait until you’re thirsty to dig a well.” -Chinese proverb
Do not wait until you’re hungry to plant a seed. I’m planning out a vegetable garden in our yard, even though I don’t have a green thumb. One of my desired plants is the green onion. I like the pizzazz of a scallion spicing up a dish. Unfortunately, whenever I buy a whole bunch of them at the store, I use only a little bit. Then the rest remain in the fridge to wither away. I thought I’d save a little money and grow my own.
The hardware stores don’t carry green onion seeds, but my mom mentioned I could grow them from my usual grocery purchases. Researching online, I found people growing them in water! So I grabbed a bunch from my local farmers’ market and tested out the theory:
Amazing! Use the green shoots in your dishes, save the white parts with roots, and have at it. Here are some other neat plantings I know of:
- Watermelon: After housing renovations, friends noticed something sprouting in their front yard. Workers had eaten watermelon while fixing up their home leading to a patch of the juicy fruit!
- Tomato: A neighbor found a vine growing in her compost bin!
- Popcorn: As a teen, I placed a kernel in the ground and grew a stalk with popcorn ears.
Share your plant stories!
Way to go! Loads of veggies can be grown from scraps like that, even pineapples from their green tops, (except they will take a long time to actually get any fruit and have to be transplanted into potting soil). Every tried avocados from the pit? Makes a lovely house plant. When the children were small we used to grow carrot tops and sweet potatoes in water too. I have a gardening book (probably 1980’s) witch had a whole section on kitchen scrap gardening. It’s still in my library, I’ll go find it and have a look. :)
Thanks! That’s amazing, Veronica! I knew about regular potatoes, but not these others. I’ll definitely have to try out avocados.
I have bad soil where ai live so nothing grows. So growing plants in jars of water is often ideal for me. I have tried the green onions many times with success. One of my most exciting growth was an avocado! It grew roots and a plant in a jar of water. It grew to uabout a foot when I decided to transplant it in my backyard. That didn’t last. Again, nothing grows in my soil.
I also like bamboo for growing in water. I hope an avocado will grow for me–love eating it!