The TRUTH About Regrowing Veggies From Kitchen Scraps

We've all seen them - and I've even ROASTED some. The "viral hacks" about regrowing common plants from kitchen scraps. In today's video, our resident horticulturist Chris actually regrew ALL of the common scraps to see what ACTUALLY happens and what that means for your garden.

00:00 - Intro
01:00 - Plant Morphology
01:24 - Seed To Tree
02:15 - Non Viable Seeds
03:34 - Vegetative parts
04:05 - Trying Scrap Experiment
09:19 - Stems
10:14 - Leaves
12:29 - Biennials & Flowering
13:01 - Plant Lifecycle
13:55 - Outro

IN THIS VIDEO

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DISCLAIMER

[epicgardening]

Hopefully this clears up some of the regrowing hacks you see out there on the internet! Stay tuned for more experiments ;)

[BPbakup]

The carrot won't give you a new carrot but it will give you greens, which will in time give you flowers wich will give you seeds which will give you carrots next year....

[cinemaocd]

30 years ago I was talking to my neighbor who was a life long vegetable gardeners who had amazing produce. The original source for his prize cherry tomato plants was a single delicious tomato he'd eaten in a cafe decades earlier. He saved the seeds in his hankerchief and grew them at home and kept saving seeds every year. I also think that if you are someone like me who spends $3-4 a week on green onions week, it's worth it to have a window box that is producing fresh onions out of waste.

[Navyuncle]

This is interesting material. A lot of people don't understand how to propagate plants. A side note, my wife's grandpa once threw a peach seed out his back door. I grew into a natural dwarf and produced peaches 🍑 in about three years.

[irishime]

Despite these hacks being oversimplified, I developed a love for growing ginger & galangal in big pots. I didn't imagine myself having a green thumb. Both plants are slow growing in reality yet my patience was rewarded with baby ginger and ginger flowers. Baby ginger is tender & creamy. I have never seen a ginger flower in my life and I was very pleased. These hacks were an opportunity for me to learn about properly growing plants.

[travishunter]

I appreciate this video being less dismissive of regrowing thing. I personally love growing weird plants from scraps or seeds from the store. It's like an experiment lol. I grew a clementine tree from a seed (that it wasn't supposed to have) and it's been 7 years I'm hoping it flowers soon. Did the same with an apple tree, lemon tree and star fruit. Oh and dragon fruit

[linda]

Actually I have an avacado tree grown from my organic seed. It took 6 years to produce but Ive been getting beautiful avacados for 2 years now 👏😁

[northshoregirl]

There was a sale on last year for live lettuce and I bought 10 live plants for $10. I harvested the outer leaves on all of them and put them in my green bags and then planted the centres and had delicious butter, green, and red leaf lettuce all year round!!

[alecbrown]

Regardless of getting produce or not, this kind of thing is perfect to get children interested in fruit, veg, and tubers and growing things in general. And perfect for letting them grow plants on their windowsills, and that sense of satisfaction, as at the end of it, transplanting them into a pot the child can decorate, and have a healthy collections of interesting plants

[zeldafae]

My mother has been doing this my whole life. Regrowing from scraps set up in the window seal above the kitchen sink. It was a treat for us kids to watch things grow and then eventually get to put them in the garden out back in our tiny yard. I've kept this going as an adult and in my college years back in the 90's people thought I was crazy for covering my little room in growing plant scraps... but they were always amazed by my yield.

[christines]

At the start of the pandemic I increased our garden space. Primarily because I knew i was going to have time on my hands.
Daughter decided that I'd done it to ward off starvation, and created 3 additional 10x10 garden beds. She filled them with sprouting store bought potatoes, dried beans from my pantry, regrow lettuce, beat tops for greens, and carrot tops we made pesto from.

Store bought produce salvaged seeds, for the most part didn't produce for her, with one major exception. Bell peppers. She got unbelievable results. Big plants, tons of peppers.
Last summer we picked out quality seeds together and she had even more fun. It has been awesome having this to do together.

[qkzgjuc]

This year we had a surprise scrap garden. We toss kitchen scraps into the lower naturalized area of our yard. Occasionally, I'll clear the area with a weed eater. About 4 weeks ago I went to this area to work and found 8 tomato plants and a butter squash plant. The tomatoes are now about 6' tall, covered in young fruit and doing great. From a single main stem, the butter squash covers an area that is about 8' x 15' with several that are almost ready to be picked. It opens new male & female flowers daily which I pollenate. Finding these things thriving in this area motivated me to clear the whole space and put in an assorted veggie garden. First frost in this area of South Carolina is typically in December, so there is plenty of time. Thanks for the video.

[courtneyhurt]

I loved how she explained things so well!! I feel like videos usually just show off fast results, and she explained in a smart way that didn't make me feel stupid. She used plant science/biology casually and not like its exclusive knowledge I wouldn't understand. I found her and followed!! I'd happily let her teach me anything about growing because she gained my trust by showing me realistic tips in a way that ties into what I already know. I'm very impressed and happy to have come across this. 😊

[ceceliaclapham]

Green onions are the best kitchen scrap regrow. They grow super fast and require very little care so they're a great to grow right in the kitchen and just cut and come again. I've kept the same patch from a bunch I bought almost 2 years ago going! I once cut all of them clear down to the whites and within 6 hours there was at least 1/4 inch of new green growth so if you're an impatient gardener, space limited or just need an easy win to build confidence go for the green onions!

[imalwayslast]

I did the potato bucket experiment this year with one potato we had forgotten about. Quartered it, put it in 4 buckets, waited for the leaves to die, and wound up with 6 pounds of potatoes. My wife's mind was blown(the past two years have been learning a lot from me.) I have been doing gardens for 20 years, but had never tried doing potatoes. I was very satisfied.

[christopherhedekar]

I'm growing my food from scraps for the first time in my life. I'm blown away how fun and interesting this is for my wife and I. Considering the prices of food these days we are better off to grow our own. Thanks to Trudoh.

[hackerbynight]

Bit of an interesting story:

I believe it was around 5-6 years ago that I decided to take a seed from an orange I got at the grocery store and see if I could grow it. I followed some guides on how to get the best germination rates and soon enough a little seedling popped up! Several years later and it’s still going strong sitting on my windowsill in a pretty big pot as the plant is slowly turning into a small tree.

Eventually I will have to plant it outside where it won’t be constricted to a pot and can grow freely. It’s funny cause my goal was never to get any fruits from it, I just wanted to see if I could do it haha. It’s one of my big achievements having managed to keep it alive for so long since oranges really aren’t native to my country (Sweden)

[lisawhite-mormando]

If you have a reptile as a pet, the regrown lettuce is great. Once it gets roots, just plant in your tank. It's pretty and edible.

[Allensaint]

This is the deep detail an apartment farmer needs. Thank you!

[amanawolf]

Glad she mentioned the thing about potatoes. I'd love to buy some red-potatoes from the grocery store, the ones no one would buy, and just shove them into a bag, wait a bit, and let them start to sprout. I could start a nice garden of reds and get some decent results. Only time I kinda got screwed over is when some bugs got in and destroyed my crop. I've also had success at regrowing onions from the lower part of the bulb. The problem is that it was more a luck of the draw as it happened maybe 2 out of the seven to twelve times I've done it.