The Truth About Regrowing Veggies from Kitchen Scraps

You gotta know the truth about regrowing your own food from grocery store scraps. I know you've seen all the viral videos. Buy one lemon and never buy another one. Grow your own avocados at home. Never buy a carrot from the grocery store again. I've seen how viral these videos go. And so I'm here today to break down the truth for you. So you know which grocery store items you actually can grow your yourself at home from the scraps, and which ones are absolutely not worth the effort. So we're going to look at all these foods from the grocery and by the end, you're going to know which ones you could actually turn into more food at home. And you'll know which ones you should just eat up and enjoy and then rebuy from the grocery store. Or even better, learn to grow them from seed or plant in your garden. And you're going to want to stick around because at the end I'm going to tell you the very best food you can absolutely regrow from grocery store scraps. All right, we're going to go through all these veggies one by one and we're going to sort them. Worth it. Definitely not worth it. All right, let's start off with carrots. They are so beautiful. They are so good for you. And they are roots. So these grow underground. I didn't know this, so maybe you know this, but they grow underground starting right here at the shoulder of the carrot. All this growth is happening under the soil, and then all this leafy growth is what happens above the soil line. Now, if you've seen any of the viral videos, what they do is they cut off the carro, enjoy eating it. They cut off the greens, maybe make a little salad with this. And then they stick the carrot top in some water. So they leave just enough of the carrot top like this, stick it in some water, and then they tell you that you're going to end up with a new carrot. This carrot will never be a carrot again. It never will be. This will regrow greens, which you can see already happening from this little scrap. So I set these up just about a week ago, and you can see how from this little carrot top, it is indeed regrowing. It's growing a new carrot top from the base. But this root will never replenish itself. It will never try, as it might become a carrot again. If you want to have more carrots, like the orange, yellow, white part, you're going to need to either grow some from seed or go back to the grocery Store and buy some more. So for me, growing carrots from carrot tops is definitely not worth it. Next up is ginger. So ginger is a rhizome. It grows right on the top of the soil surface. And this one, unfortunately, I haven't seen many viral videos about it, but you can actually regrow more ginger from ginger. I believe they call these hands. And each of these will grow little sprouts. You can see each of the little nodules. This is going to create leafy growth above the soil surface. And the more leafy growth created from these ginger hands, the more ginger rhizomes will grow from that plant. So you can actually put this just in some soil or compost, put it on a heat mat so it can warm up in the cooler parts of the year, move it outdoors so it can grow in the heat of the summer, and you will indeed be able to grow more ginger from your grocery store ginger. Growing ginger from grocery store ginger is definitely worth it. Buy one head of lettuce and never buy any more lettuce again. Have you seen this? I have seen seen so many viral videos of people chopping off the top of their romaine lettuce, planting it out in the garden, and then suddenly, magically, it becomes this entire forest of lettuce. These older leaves will not regrow. These will just deteriorate. And you can see how they're already starting to break down and turn brown. But all lettuces, all greens, grow from the heart of the plant. They continually produce new leaves from the center of their plant. So, so this romaine lettuce is doing just that and creating new leaves from the center. But it's never going to create that same beautiful head that you got from the grocery. And these leaves I found are some of the most bitter leaves you'll ever taste when it comes to having lettuce. So, yes, you will definitely get growth out of the base of these lettuce plants, but it is absolutely not worth the effort of putting these things on your kitchen counter and waiting a few weeks to eat some super bitter lettuce. So lettuce, definitely not worth it. Next up is sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are a tuber and they grow underground. Now, sweet potatoes need to be grown outdoors in the soil in the hottest part of the summer. So you're not going to be able to regrow a sweet potato on your kitchen counter. But use those slips and you really can start an entirely new sweet potato plant in the garden outside in the summer from a sweet potato that you got from the grocery store. So these sweet potatoes are definitely worth regrowing. We're putting them over here. Next up, the beloved avocado. Even some gardeners that I really respect have made videos about growing their own avocado from the seeds, and it's just not possible. So you can definitely start to see a plant out of an avocado seed. They cut the avocado in half, put the seed in water, and the seed is going to break down, open up, and. And it will actually grow a plant. But that plant is never going to produce avocados for you. And even if it did, you would have to wait three to five years to get that fruit. And even if that happened, you would need two of the trees planted next to each other so that they cross pollinate. So avocados definitely do grow on trees. It's an amazing fruit that we all get to enjoy. But it's pretty difficult to grow your own fruit from this little avocado scrap that you got from the grocery. So avocados either open your own avocado tree farm or just enjoy the ones from the grocery. Next up, we got the beet. So I'm sure you've seen people plant their beet tops and say that you can never have to buy a beet from the grocery again. So beets are also root crops. They are annual crops that are grown from seed. And I have to tell you, even if you cut off that beet and stick it in some water, and this is all that's going to happen. So this little beet top definitely is still growing, but what it's growing is just more leaves. For me, regrowing beets is definitely not worth it. Next up is green onions. You can get these from the grocery. And honestly, there's not enough hype. There is not enough hype about regrowing this vegetable. So when you look at this plant, you can see which part was underground. This is where the roots are. We've got this white part that was not exposed to sunlight, and then these greens were. They've actually already been trimmed back by the time you get them from the grocery. So when you get these home, you want to chop off whatever part you want to enjoy in the kitchen. And then you simply take the white part of the green onion, stick it in some water, and it will actually regrow itself. In fact, if it's warm outside, if you've got your garden set up or even just a pot of soil, you can just skip the water part and go straight to the dirt. So for sure regrowing green onions from grocery store scraps is, is absolutely worth it. Also in the onion family is garlic. And once again, not enough hype, not enough hype for growing garlic. So when you're using your garlic up in the kitchen, eating it up, cooking it up, you want to save out one or two cloves from the bulb. And then you have two options. You can simply take that little clove and just submerge it in a little bit of water and you'll get what's called a garlic green. It'll grow very similar to your green onions, and it's going to give you this nice garlic flavor that you can grow right, right on your kitchen sink. The other option is to take that clove, head out to the garden or get a pot of soil, stick the clove down in that soil 4 to 6 inches, and in about 6 to 9 months, you're going to get an entire new bulb of garlic. Be sure if you want to regrow your own garlic, that you get organic garlic. And it's going to be even better if you get it from the farmer's market. If you want to grow your own garlic for sure, forever is worth it. Now, growing your own garlic is one of the things you can do in just a few minutes and you get tons of produce from it. And that's exactly the kind of thing I talk about in my new book, Five Minute Gardener. This book is full of year round garden habits for busy people. So if you've got a lot to do and you're not sure how to fit the garden into your everyday life, doing a couple things like planting and growing your own garlic, you're going to learn how in my new book, Five Minute Gardener. We'll put a link to get it right below this video. Next up is lemon. I've seen this from some of my favorite creators and it's just misleading. So people will cut open a lemon, they'll take a little seed, they'll put it in water and the seed will sprout, as seeds do tend to do. And then over a few weeks or months, they'll start to have a little plant growing from that seed. And then suddenly the video will kind of shake and do all these magical wizard of Oz type things. And then there'll be all these lemons hanging off of that tiny plant. And if only that were so. It's just not going to happen that way for you. I hate to break it to you, so if you want to see a seed sprout, definitely try this out. But a lemon Tree takes a lot more than just a little seed. And even if that seed produces a plant, you're going to be waiting 2, 3, 5, 10 years before you get lemons off of that little plant. And chances are that seed has been treated so that it doesn't grow into a new plant. Unfortunately, that's just kind of the way our food system is these days. So I would say growing your own seed, unless you just want to watch the magic of a seed seed germinating, doing it from a lemon is just not worth it. Next up is celery. Celery regrows from the heart in the same way that romaine lettuces do, in the same way that most of these vegetables do. And you can see that just as I pick apart this one little plant, right? It's got all these stalks that just have the stem now, because the grocer cut off all the leaves. But here in the center is a stalk that's got all these little leaves on it, because plants need leaves to photosynthesize. So if you were to cut off all these celery stalks and then stick a celery into some water, this is exactly what's going to happen. The very center of your celery is going to start to make new leaves because it's getting ready to photosynthesize and feed the plant. But all of these stalks, none of these are going to regrow. You'll have to regrow your celery right from the center. So regrowing celery, for the most part, it's just not worth it. And last but not least, in fact, this is the best one, in my opinion, is potatoes. So potatoes, just like sweet potatoes, are a tuber, and potatoes regrow from themselves. What you're looking at here is literally the source for growing a new potato plant. Case in point. So each of these potatoes have all these little eyes on them, and. And every little eye on a potato will create a new plant that will grow more potatoes. So you can see from these potatoes that may or may not have spent a little too much time in my pantry, I could have two plants from this one potato, and I could have two plants from this one potato. And let me tell you, if you're looking to get a lot of food from your grocery store scraps, this is the way potatoes grow in the warm part of the year after the chance of frost has passed, and they don't need a lot of space. They don't need the same heat and sun and space that a sweet potato does. But they will grow five, six, seven, eight potatoes from just one plant. So potatoes regrowing from scraps, a hundred percent worth it. And there you have it. That is the absolute uncensored truth about regrowing food from your grocery store scraps. Now, you want to know a super easy way to save money and grow your own food and not waste time and space doing all this stuff. It's just growing some easy to grow plants from seed. And that's exactly what we want to help you do at Gardenary. In fact, I so want you to start growing a little bit of your own food this year that I'm giving away 10 packs of seed to each of you this year. You can find out how to get your 10 packs of Gardenary seed right below this video. Now, while you're here, don't forget to subscribe if you want to always know the truth about what's possible and not probable in your own garden space. We've got loads of videos coming your way and you don't want to miss a single one. Now, if you have a friend or family member who's been duped by one of these viral videos, you got to tag them and share this video with them so they don't spend a lot of time and space trying to grow some carrots in their kitchen, if you know what I mean. I cannot wait to see you next time right here on the Gardenary channel. In the meantime, and I'll get outside and plant some seeds. And don't forget to never stop growing. I'll see you next time.