Growing Green Onions in Water

“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:

green onions

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!

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Comments

  1. 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. :)

    • Jennifer J. Chow says

      Thanks! That’s amazing, Veronica! I knew about regular potatoes, but not these others. I’ll definitely have to try out avocados.

  2. 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.

    • Jennifer J. Chow says

      I also like bamboo for growing in water. I hope an avocado will grow for me–love eating it!

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  1. […] taste is savory but too heavy-handed for me–all those extra garnishes! (I prefer a clean scallion taste à la Haemul Pajeon–Korean seafood pancake.) What I did enjoy was the monjayaki […]

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