Do you know how to recycle vegetables?
I’ve been doing so this year in California.
I’ll tell you how.
And show some photos from my own recycle vegetables.
Recycle vegetables that still have roots
It’s easier if they have their roots.
Green Onions
Take fresh green onions, slice off the white section, about half inch down.
Position the root in water, watch.
When a bit of green begins to grow from the white section, plant in your garden.
Done!
Mine, planted last fall, is now about to throw seeds.
Bonus!
Lettuce
While explaining this concept to my grocer, he handed me this box of lettuce.
I have a guy who comes in here every six months or so, buys five boxes of this butter lettuce–notice it still has its roots–and just eats from them until they are finally depleted.”
I’ll have to let you know how this works, but it looks pretty convenient so far!
How to recycle vegetables already trying to grow
Where there’s life (or roots), there’s hope!
Carrots
I know the grocer because I stopped one day and asked him not to remove the greenery from the carrots.
(True confession, I hate the sliminess of those pre-packaged “baby” carrots and only buy the real thing. How hard is it to scrape them, anyway?”)
He handed me a bunch with greenery still attached.
I took them home, cut off the greenery, about a half-inch down, and put them in a shallow pan of water.
(I actually reused a plastic egg carton which was perfect).
Several weeks later, I spied the beginning of roots, took them outside, and planted the fledgling carrots into the garden.
Look at them now!
Voila!
Notice on the right the butter lettuce my grocer handed me today after the aforementioned conversation!
This week’s salad and perhaps next month’s salads, too?
Potatoes
Potatoes are trickier.
But, if they stay in the dark pantry too long, roots can begin to sprout.
You need to examine them carefully.
If the potato isn’t green or doesn’t look suspicious, I take it outside.
I dig a hole in the ground or garden bed, maybe a foot down.
I then cut the potato into chunks maybe 2 x 4 inches with a sprouting eye, and place it into the bottom of the hole.
Cover lightly and wait.
When the green leaves appear, I put more dirt around the leaves, all the way to the top leaf.
And so on, eventually filling the hole as the potato plant grows.
We’ve eaten the potatoes when they’ve been new and small.
Delicious!
Watch them grow themselves
This is the story of strawberries–which are basically a weed!
Several years ago at the end of the growing season, I saw a six-pack of tired strawberry plants.
I bought them for cheap, brought them home, set them in our graywater garden, and went inside for the winter.
By spring, we had a lot of little strawberry plants!
I knew to pinch off the flowers that first round–it encourages the plant to grow rather than produce fruit.
Soon, I had more plants as the strawberry “mother” plants sent out their runners.
Once the “baby” strawberry plants were well rooted, I cut the “umbilical” runner. The new plant began to produce flowers as it grew more established in the soil.
Pinch. The plant sent the roots deeper.
A month later, more flowers, berries!
Easy.
And if you’ve planted tomatoes in the past–who doesn’t have volunteers?
What about herbs?
Aren’t they just weeds in disguise?
This rosemary is the daughter of a clipping I took from a friend’s rosemary bush 20 years ago.
Same practice: clip, grow roots in water, plant.
When I left my former home, I took a clipping of the original clipping (now three feet by four feet wide), and planted it here.
I’m not sure how often I’ve cut it back–but we’ve always got fresh rosemary!
The grocer’s story about how to recycle vegetables.
The grocer enjoyed hearing my stories today, and then told me one.
A friend had a south facing kitchen window on a hillside.
One day, he hauled in a load of topsoil and dumped it just below the window.
All summer long, he tossed his vegetable scraps out the window.
He did nothing else.
By the end of the summer, many of those scraps had rooted. He ate his own recycled vegetables for several months, laughing that he didn’t have to do a thing!
A few photos of my process
Tweetables
How do you recycle vegetables? Click to Tweet
The amazing way vegetables can be recycled into new ones! Click to Tweet
We have done a few of these!
Related: During the time we lived on the mountain (and I had given up gardening due to a very short growing season and too many deer), my husband cut down gutter scraps to fit in our south facing window. He made three troughs, poking holes in the bottom for drainage (troughs drained into the trough below, a tray at the bottom caught extra), then we planted lettuces and spinach and a few herbs. We were eating fresh greens pretty much all year, right on through the winter. It was awesome.
Great idea. I thought about raising my strawberries that way–much neater–but they seem to be faring well in the ground!