5 foods or vegetables you can grow from scraps

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A full belly doesn’t have to be the end. Even after you’ve enjoyed your meal, you can have more of where that came from.

Here’s how: keep the scraps and don’t dispose them as soon as you are done.

You can replant and regrow them for further usage, saving costs on grocery shopping.

The great news is that you don’t need to be a pro at gardening or farming to make this happen. Even a lot of soil is not necessary, as you will soon find out.

Here are five foods and vegetables you can regrow from scraps.

1. Potatoes

With just potato peelings, you can regrow potatoes in your home. Ensure that they have eyes on them and cut those peelings into two inch pieces, leaving at least two or three eyes on each piece.

Then let them dry out overnight and plant them about 16cm deep in your soil.

The eyes should face up when planting.

After a few weeks, you will see the potato plant begin to grow.

2. Green onions

There’s little to no stress involved in regrowing green onions from scraps. All you need to do is save the base of the plant (which is the white ends) instead of throwing it away as you normally would do.

Place them in a pot of water and close to sunlight, preferably in a windowsill. As often as needed, replace the water.

Soon enough, the green onions will start to regrow, from more roots until the green part fully sprouts. Then you can harvest.

3. Lettuce

If you love adding lettuce to your salads and meals, then even better is that you can regrow it in your mini garden.

It’s simple: keep the base of the leftover leaves and place them in a bowl. Add a little water in the bottom.

Then take the bowl to a place that gets good sunlight. Change the water daily. Within three to four days, you’ll begin to notice roots appear along with the leaves.

As soon as this happens, transplant your lettuce in the soil. And that’s it.

4. Ginger

Nearly all recipes require ginger. But most times, you can only use a small portion, leaving the rest to wither away in your fridge or on your kitchen shelf.

There is a way to maximise the leftover ginger: regrow the root and replant it.

Simply cut off the little sprouts that begin to show from a ginger root and place it in water until roots start to grow.

After that, place the piece of ginger in potting soil with the roots facing down and the sprouts or shoots pointing up.

The ginger piece will produce new roots or rhizomes, which you can harvest in full or just remove a piece at a time.

5. Garlic

Garlic is pretty easy to grow and can be done from just one clove. All you need to do is this: buy garlic, pull one of the cloves off and plant it with the roots facing down in potting soil.

You’ll need a lot of direct sunlight for garlic; as such, keep it outdoors in the sun during the day.

Immediately you notice that new shoots have formed, cut the shoots back and your plant will produce a bulb. You can then take part of this new bulb and plant again.