Foods to Regrow From Scraps: Reduce Food Waste and Enjoy Free Food!

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Did you know you can grow vegetables from scraps? And some fruits, too. From green onions to fruit trees, with a little bit of know-how, you can reduce food waste and grow free food easily. I’m going to show you my favorite foods to regrow and how to do it. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to buy these foods once and grow forever.

Why should you bother? Well, aside from the environmental impact of reducing your waste and therefore your carbon footprint, think of the money! Groceries are more expensive than ever, and it seems like prices just keep going up, so turning your kitchen scraps into food is a brilliantly frugal way to save money without compromising.

Plus, if you regrow vegetables, herbs, and fruits indoors, your plants will help to purify the air in your home.

And there’s the undeniable satisfaction that comes when you grow your own food.

1. Regrow Salad Onions

It’s insanely easy to regrow green onions or scallions. In fact, there’s very little regrowing effort on your part.

We’ve all done it – forgotten those few green onions in the refrigerator. And when you find them, they’re all dry, papery, and sad-looking. Thankfully, you can regrow these sad, shriveled little veggies in just a few days.

You’ve got two options:

1. Drop some green onions into a glass and add enough water to cover the roots and half an inch of the white stem. Pop the glass in a sunny spot like your kitchen windowsill.

Stand back and watch them grow. Simply cut off the stems as you need them, and the plants will just keep growing. Just make sure to change the water every three days.

2. Follow the steps above until your salad onions have long, healthy roots, then plant them outside or in a pot of good quality compost and use as above.

Tip: You can also regrow chives continually using the above methods.

2. Regrowing Onions

If you want to enjoy the stronger, more robust flavor of standard onions, you can regrow these, too. It just takes a little bit more effort and space. First off, get yourself a large (2-liter or more) plastic bottle – think empty soda bottle – and remove the neck and any labels. Cut holes all over the bottle.

These holes should be large enough for half of each onion to poke through. Place the holes in even layers around your bottle for the best results. Add a layer of organic compost (this one is highly recommended), then your first layer of onion sets. Make sure the top of each onion pokes out of one of the holes.

Repeat this layering process until you fill the bottle. Water thoroughly and put the filled container in a sunny spot. In no time at all, you’ll have tasty onion shoots. This is a great way to grow onions all winter. As an added bonus, lots of insects dislike the smell of onions, so this method helps to repel bugs, too.

3. Regrow Garlic

How many times do you find an old garlic bulb or a few cloves lurking at the back of the fridge or the cupboard? Instead of hitting the trash can, regrow the garlic instead.

There are a couple of different options here. Like salad onions, you can stand a garlic bulb in a saucer of water. Make sure to only use enough water to just cover the base, and top it up every couple of days. You can then harvest the tender stems as they grow and the plant will simply keep growing.

They have a mild garlic flavor and make a fabulous addition to salads, sauces, soups, and dips.

You can also regrow garlic to get whole bulbs. Just take any leftover cloves – or a whole bulb separated into cloves, still with their protective skin on them, and plant directly in the ground. Alternatively, plant the cloves in a roomy container full of nutrient-rich soil or compost.

Bury each clove with just the tip peeking out of the soil. Each clove you plant will grow into a whole bulb, so it’s easy to grow a continual supply of fresh garlic.

4. Regrow Celery

Celery is really easy to grow from scraps. Instead of throwing away the base of the celery, jab 4 toothpicks into it, one on each side, and suspend it over a small bowl of water.

Make sure the water covers the root end by about half an inch to an inch. And change the water every third day.

In just a few days, you’ll see new leaves growing from the center. And in about a week, roots will start to appear from the base.

Keep changing the water every third day, and don’t panic when the remains of the outer stalks start to turn brown – it’s totally normal.

Once the roots are about an inch long, plant the celery in rich potting soil or directly in your garden. Make sure the root and the base that you originally cut, and a little of the new growth, are below the soil surface. Keep the soil moist and the celery out of direct sun and watch it grow!

Harvest stalks from the outside-in, or wait until the celery is full-size, then lift the whole plant, eat the stalks, and regrow the new base.

5. Grow Strawberries From Scraps

Strawberries are delicious – if you buy local and organic – but they’re costly. So why not grow your own? And instead of buying over-priced forced or hybrid plants from the garden center, you can just use your kitchen scraps.

I’ve covered how to grow strawberries from scraps in detail here.

Buy some local, organic strawberries, enjoy them, but keep the tops or a couple of fruits back.

• Blend them with water for 20 seconds.
• Let the mixture sit for 2 minutes
• Scoop out the floating seeds and discard
• Run the mixture through a sieve and get rid of as much pulp as possible
• Fill a seed tray with rich, high-quality potting compost, then sow the strawberry seeds thinly across the surface. Cover the seeds with a fine layer of compost, and water gently
• Place the tray in a greenhouse or on a sunny windowsill. Your strawberry seeds will take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks to germinate, so don’t panic if you don’t get instant results.
• Once they germinate and have their first true leaves, you can transplant the seedlings to individual pots to mature, then plant in their final position.

Check out our full strawberry growing guide and our ideas for genius ways to grow strawberries.

Don’t forget, strawberry plants put off runners every year, so once your strawberry plants have matured, they’ll put off a whole bunch of new plants. Every year. You’ll never need to buy strawberries again!

Leave the runners attached as long as possible, as they’re stronger that way and they take nutrients from the mother plant, too. Place each runner on top of a pot of compost, and they’ll develop strong roots.

So, as long as you care for your plants and the runners, once you’ve seeded one batch of strawberry plants, you’ll never need to do another – just keep potting the runners each year.

6. Regrow Lemons From Seed

It’s insanely awesome that you can grow an indoor lemon tree. Just from store-bought lemons! Lemon trees do take time to grow, but then you are growing an entire tree, not just some fresh greens from the tops of root vegetables.

Just like with strawberries, start off with an organic lemon so that you don’t risk getting lemon seeds that have been chemically altered to not germinate. And, if you want a dwarf tree, go for organic Meyer lemons or similar.

Will you get lemons from your lemon trees?

Yes, you can get lemons from a lemon tree that you grow from seed. But it can take 7 years. So this one is a bit of a future investment! However, in the meantime, they make lovely house plants if you put them in roomy containers full of rich soil.

Here’s how you grow a lemon tree from seed:

1. Choose a big, juicy lemon and harvest the seeds, washing them and removing all flesh and juice.
2. Fill a small pot with a pasteurized soil mix and lightly moisten it.
3. Plant more than one seed per pot to maximize the chance that one will germinate.
4. Put plastic wrap over the top or use a ziplock bag to make a propagator.
5. Water regularly but don’t let the soil get soggy.
6. Keep the seeds at around 70F/21C until they germinate, then remove the propagator and wait until they get to around 4 to 6 inches.
7. Then transplant them to roomier pots and give potassium-rich fertilizer every 2 to 4 weeks.
8. Provide 4 to 6 hours of direct sunlight per day.
9. Repot the little tree every time its roots fill the current pot.

7. Pineapples

You can grow your own pineapple, too. But it’ll take two years to bear fruit. Having said that, I love growing pineapples from tops. There’s just something fun about it.

You need a ripe (not overripe) pineapple. Ideally, grow at least two, as they can be temperamental, so it’s likely that one may not survive to maturity. 

To get a pineapple to grow from scraps, you need to prepare the crown by twisting it off the fruit and cutting off the bottommost four rows of leaves to expose the stem.

Leave it to cure and dry for around 3 days, then pop it in water, making sure the stem is covered by about an inch. Change the water every few days.

In about a week, you’ll notice roots beginning to shoot from the stem. Once those roots are about an inch long, transfer the pineapple to a pot of nutrient-rich, fast-draining soil. And keep them warm. Pineapples are tropical, so if you don’t live in a tropical climate, you’ll need to grow them indoors in a greenhouse or conservatory.

Pot them on as they outgrow their pots, and make sure you don’t overwater, or there’s a good risk they’ll rot.

8. Ginger

Regrowing ginger is super easy – and you can do it from roots you buy from the grocery store.

Choose ones that have “eyes buds” – similar to the chits or eyes that appear on potatoes when they’re ready for planting. If you can’t get any with buds already, get any good size ginger root and let it sit at room temperature, where it will start to shoot.

Now, ginger is really a tropical plant, so it requires warmth and moisture – cold weather will kill it. So, unless you want to grow and harvest it all during one summer, it’s advisable to plant the roots in pots that you can just bring indoors in cold weather.

Take a deep pot and fill it with rich compost, then add your ginger roots, with the eyes facing upward. If you’ve got a chunky root with multiple eye buds, cut it up into smaller pieces, and plant each one.

Cover the ginger root with around 1.5 to 2 inches of compost and water thoroughly. Now, yes, ginger is a tropical plant, and yes, it likes heat, but it also likes partial shade, so keep this in mind when you’re placing your pot.

While you can grow them indoors, they thrive outside in warm weather. Therefore, try starting them off in the greenhouse in mid-spring and, once all danger of frost is past, put them outside and let them grow through to the fall. Then bring the pots back inside.

Alternatively, grow them year-round in a warm spot in the house. Or in a shady corner of the greenhouse or conservatory.

Just dig up a fresh piece of root as you need it, breaking it off the main plant below the soil line. The rest of the root will keep on growing and spreading. If you harvest a piece of ginger with an obvious eye at the top, cut off a generous chunk with the eye in it, and replant it for a whole new ginger plant.

You’ll never need to buy ginger again!

9. Regrowing Beets

Beets are one of those root crops that let you grow the top portion to harvest tasty greens. Like many root vegetables, all you need to do with beets is put the top that you normally throw away into a saucer of shallow water, and in just a few weeks, you’ll be harvesting beet greens.

Beet greens go great in salads and stirfries and are a fantastic source of vitamins K, A, C, E, and B12, along with iron, magnesium, copper, manganese, calcium, and fiber. That’s pretty impressive for kitchen scraps!

10. How to Grow Your Own Apple Trees From Seed

As with lemon trees, growing your own apple trees is possible, but it takes a long time, and you’ll have faster results, and arguably more success, by grafting.

It’ll take between 7 and 10 years for the trees you grow from your kitchen scraps to be mature enough to produce apples. But it’s possible.

You basically grow them in exactly the same way as lemons, but the difference is that apples don’t need a tropical climate, so, once germinated, you can move them outdoors if all chance of frost has passed for the year.

11. Grow Your Own Cherry Tree From Scraps

And, just like apples, you can grow your own cherry tree. The process is similar, but the prep is different. Cherries need to go through stratification, which is where you basically expose them to cold for a prolonged period before planting.

• So, eat some very ripe cherries and save the pits.
• Soak them in water for 5 minutes and remove all flesh.
• Pat them dry.
• Leave them in a warm, dry place for around 3 days.
• Put them in an airtight container in the fridge for 10 weeks (this is the stratification period).
• Once the 10 weeks are up, you bring the pits up to room temperature and plant them, following the same method as the lemons or apples.

12. Growing Carrot Tops From Scraps

No vegetable scraps are more overlooked than the humble carrot tops. These neglected kitchen scraps are insanely easy to grow and get you delicious, nutritious fresh greens.

Carrot tops are chock-full of vitamins, including six times more vitamin C than the root. You’ll also find plenty of vitamins K and E, along with potassium, calcium, fiber, and a host of other phytonutrients that you won’t find in the root.

And they’re really tasty, with an interesting flavor profile that’s like an earthy mix of carrot and parsley.

As with beets and other root vegetables, all you need to do is sit the cut-off portion of the carrot in a saucer of shallow water and let it grow. Just be sure to change the water every couple of days.

In just a few days, you’ll see new green shoots coming from the top of the carrot. And in a week or two, you’ll be able to start harvesting them and adding them to salads, casseroles, stirfries, and more.

13. Regrow Lettuce Scraps

Another one of those kitchen scraps that we just throw away or chuck in the compost, lettuce scraps are easy to regrow. Any type of lettuce works, including heading and loose leaf varieties.

And you don’t need potting soil to do it, either. Just save the base that you trimmed off the lettuce when prepping your salad. Then sit that base in shallow water and watch it grow. Again, change the water every few days.

You’ll soon see new leaves growing from the center of the base.

Now, you can keep the lettuce growing like this for a while, harvesting small leaves as they appear. Or, you can replant the lettuce once it’s showing healthy roots at least an inch long.

If you want to replant the lettuce, do so in nutrient-rich soil, burying the roots and base.

14. Bok Choi

Bok choi is one of those more exotic kitchen scraps in many households, because it tends to be more expensive than spinach, cabbage, or other cruciferous veggies. But it doesn’t need to be a luxury. It’s as easy to regrow bok choi as it is carrots or lettuce.

• Use up your pak choi, leaving about two to three inches of base to use as your regrowth plant.
• Place a few toothpicks in the pak choi, spaces reasonably evenly apart. This helps to prop it up and reduces the chance of the outer leaves rotting before the roots form.
• Suspend the base, by the tooth picks, over a bowl and add water, making sure the very bottom of the base sits in the water to encourage root growth.
• Sit it on a warm sunny windowsill and wait, just changing out the water every few days.
• In a week or so, roots should start to form, and new green shoots appear in the center.
• Once the roots reach about half an inch to an inch long, to get a big, full-size plant, remove the yellow outer leaves and transfer the plant to a container or rich potting soil or plant directly in the ground.

15. Basil

Basil is a great addition to the herb garden, and you can regrow it from kitchen scraps. In the vegetable garden, basil is an incredibly useful companion plant for many other vegetables. And it’s a flavorful culinary herb, too.

Basically, all you need to do is take cuttings from an existing basil plant or, if you don’t grow it already, keep a few stalks the next time you buy it for your food. Cut the stalks down to about 6 inches, ideally right below a leaf node. And cut the stalk at an angle to help with water uptake.

Remove leaves on the bottom third of the stalk to avoid them rotting in the water.

Add your stems to a jar of water, making sure no leaves are submerged. Change the water every other day. You’ll notice growth coming from the bottom of the stem – these are the new roots – in about a week to 10 days.

Once the roots are an inch or two long, you can transplant them outdoors if all danger of frost has passed, or into roomy containers if you need to grow them indoors.

16. Rosemary

Rosemary is another herb garden must-have. It’s an essential companion plant if you grow organic vegetables, and it’s a beautiful, flavorful culinary herb. Plus, it’s used in many herbal remedies and preparations.

Now, you can start rosemary cuttings straight in compost, if it’s of good quality and you use rooting hormone. I don’t. I have successfully started mine, every time, in water first. But yes, I did use some of my homemade rooting compound each time – willow water! Get the willow water recipe here (it’s ridiculously easy).

Using willow water helps to build sturdy roots quickly, so cuts down on the time my rosemary has to sit on the windowsill in a glass of water.

Start by taking a cutting or keeping back a few sprigs of rosemary and strip all the leaves from the bottom two inches.

TIP: Choose the soft-stemmed new growth rather than old woody stems. These are much easier to root.

Stand the cuttings in a glass of water, making sure no leaves are submerged. Add just a bit of willow water to give it a kick start. Sit it in a warm place with plenty of light.

Change the water every two or three days. And you can always add a touch more willow water at the same time.

Now, even with willow water, it’ll likely take three to four weeks for roots to emerge, and you’ll need to wait a while longer for those roots to get strong and at least an inch long.

Once the roots are a good size, start to harden off the cuttings over about a week, then transplant outdoors. Choose a sunny area outdoors where your rosemary can bask in the sunshine while the roots establish themselves belowground.

There are many other kitchen scraps you can grow for free food, including potatoes, for actual new potato crops, and turnips for more greens. Plus there’s other fruits, like avocados, raspberries, and more that you can grow.

Anything that you can grow from kitchen scraps reduces your reliance on the grocery stores, reduces your food bill, and lowers your carbon footprint. So even if that little pile of kitchen scraps from your dinner doesn’t look that special, they really are.

In just a couple of weeks, you could be harvesting free food from them, or watching as leaves begin appearing and roots grow, ready for planting in soil for a full crop.

FAQs

In many cases, yes. As long as the food hasn’t been treated with a growth inhibitor, it should be fine to grow food from store-bought vegetables. To be extra sure, wherever you can, choose the organic produce, as this won’t be treated and is therefore more likely to grow.

Green onions or carrots are the easiest vegetables to grow from scraps. They grow quickly and easily in just a bit of water. All you need to do is change the water regularly to prevent bacteria and algae.

You can grow any fruit from scraps that you remove the seeds from, including apples, cherries, lemons, plums, peaches, and nectarines. You can also grow strawberries from scraps along with raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, among others.