- If you've been on the internet
in the last two years,
you've probably seen all of these
regrowing kitchen scrap hacks.
Blossom, baby, gotta love 'em.
Turns out, most of them
don't give you what you want,
or even if they do grow,
it doesn't grow into something
you can realistically use.
So we're going up to Chris in Vancouver, BC,
who's been growing out
all the popular kitchen scrap hacks you see
to see just how many work
and how many are garbage.
- If you are looking to grow more food
from your kitchen scraps,
there are some important things
that you need to know
to see a higher level of success.
Now, with those viral regrowing hack videos,
oftentimes, they are not that helpful
because they are very unrealistic
with how plants actually grow.
And they oftentimes show these really weird
and inaccurate time lapses of one thing
growing into something completely different.
So in today's video,
we will help you understand which scraps
have a higher chance of giving you more food,
and which ones are better off left
as being experiments.
To do that, we will go into plant morphology
or the physical parts of plants
to get a better sense of why certain plants
or parts will or won't
push out more parts for us to eat.
And knowing this bit of information
will help us set more realistic expectations
of these little scraps.
And hopefully, that will help us
determine whether or not a certain scrap
is worth our time.
Probably the most captivating regrow hack videos
are the ones around growing fruit,
like citrus, apples, cucumbers,
mangoes, and kiwis.
Now, the thing with these fruit
is that even though you can
harvest these seeds and grow something,
it will likely take you years
before you can grow the plant
into something of a decent size
to actually harvest fruit.
This is especially true with citrus and apples.
So commercially, these are grafted plants,
meaning that they are not grown from seed.
When you grow these from seed,
they generally don't exhibit
the same characteristics
as the fruit that you harvested the seeds from.
And also by grafting,
commercial growers skip that baby seedling process,
because if you grow from seed,
it will take many years
before you can actually turn that seedling
into a tree that you can harvest
these beautiful fruit from.
Sometimes it's not about the weight,
it's about whether the seeds are duds or not.
So if you are a fan of English cucumbers,
they are seedless or near seedless.
So if you look at the seeds,
they're transparent, see-through.
They've got nothing really going on inside.
So if you try to grow them from seed,
nothing's really gonna happen
'cause nothing is there.
Same goes with a lot of squashes, melons,
and basically any fruit
that is harvested underripe
or bread to not have seeds.
So you're not really going to have any luck
trying to grow these from seeds.
With mangoes and the classic avocado,
if you live in a warmer climate
and you are okay waiting many years,
I say go for it.
But if you are in a cooler climate,
be prepared to keep these plants
as lovely indoor foliage plants.
Because if they are grown outside
without protection of a conservatory
or a greenhouse,
they are not gonna be happy
and they will not fruit.
Although kiwi seeds are not technically scraps,
since you can eat all of this,
let me save you half a decade or so of waiting
if you are considering
growing kiwi plants from seeds.
This is because kiwi vines,
they can grow really vigorously.
So if you can get your hands
on a small cutting
and get that rooted and in the ground,
you will see kiwi fruit
in a short amount of time.
So now let's switch it up
and talk about the vegetative parts of plants,
which are the leaves, stems and roots,
as opposed to reproductive parts,
which are the flowers, fruit, and seeds.
Now, typically,
the vegetative parts grow a lot faster
and more abundantly compared to,
let's say, fruit.
And thankfully, many of the kitchen scraps
that we end up with will push out
some sort of vegetative part for us to eat
if given the right conditions,
such as putting them in water
or some moist soil
and providing them with some light.
And actually,
I started a few of these scraps
myself a few weeks ago,
knowing that I would see some level of success
from things like lettuce, celery,
green onions, carrot, and beet tops,
as well as some other fun ones.
So basically, what I did was chop the parts,
similar to what you would see
in those hack videos.
I placed them in water,
and just kept refreshing it,
and also placed them in light and waited.
(upbeat music)
So it's been about a week or so
since I took my kitchen scraps
and placed them into containers
with a little bit of water.
And they've been in the greenhouse
in a well-lit spot, but not overly hot,
and I do see some development.
So let's take a look.
Okay, let's look at the celery.
So we do see some new leaves emerging,
which is nice.
But at the bottom here,
no signs of roots coming out of this basal area.
Same with the carrot, nothing really going on.
I'm not really expecting anything right now,
it's only been a week,
but there is a little bit of new growth
where the leaves are.
So that is maybe kinda promising.
Over here, this is looking good.
This is the base of the leek.
So it's got a nice, healthy,
intact stem area where the roots are coming out.
It's looking really good.
I'm gonna keep that in the water.
And then here, we have green onions,
very familiar.
The roots are looking good.
I mean, they were there to begin with.
But then this top part
is looking nice and healthy as well.
And those are probably ready to go
into a container or the ground.
Okay, the beet root
will not sprout a new tap root,
but we see these lovely greens right here.
They are feeling nice.
And out of this shoulder area,
we are seeing new little leaves emerge.
So that's a good sign.
We've got the lettuce here.
We've got two types, romaine,
which is really common.
We see new leaves coming out,
but the basal area, nothing quite yet,
but that's okay.
Just gonna keep that in water.
And I thought I would just do
a red leaf lettuce as well,
just to show that it does work,
as long as you keep this base intact.
And actually, over here, we see some new growth,
which is good, in the leaves, of course.
Everything is looking nice and healthy.
So if we're looking at this and going, "Wow,
look at those roots,"
well, this was actually taken
from one of those clam shell
or those bagged living lettuces.
So what I did was just trim away
the outside leaves,
and just left this center area intact.
And these are pretty much
ready to go into the ground
or into a pot as a new baby plant.
(upbeat music)
So it's been about a week
since our first check-in
when we were in the greenhouse.
And I'm happy to report
that those living lettuces
that we planted into the soil,
directly from one of these hydroponically-grown
living lettuces,
they seem to be doing quite well.
The leaves feel quite turgid,
like they're filled with water,
and I do see new growth coming out of the center.
Generally, they look really happy,
so I'm happy, because with one of these things,
I mean, depends on where you buy them from,
but I got them for roughly $3 each.
And if I can get like three to four plants,
that's a pretty good deal,
considering I get the plant
that I can continually harvest from
for the rest of the season.
Plus, I get the salad out of it.
So what I did was,
I obviously separated the plants and planted them,
but I kept them in the shade,
just to acclimate them to the outdoors,
because let's remember,
they weren't really meant to be
plants that you plant in the garden.
As you can tell, we are inside now,
just because the greenhouse
is getting a little bit too hot
and I don't want the heat to ruin our experiment.
So this is kinda like the leftover
of round one of living lettuce.
I'm not trying to grow it
hydroponically in this cup
because to do that properly,
you have to supply it with nutrients,
and I'm really not set up to do that right now.
So these guys are gonna go into the ground,
and I think they're gonna do just fine.
So continuing on with the lettuce,
I did add this new, larger romaine lettuce
into some water earlier today
because I wanna see if the size of this base
makes a difference.
So this was the first round,
this was done two weeks ago.
And this romaine is only pushing out
this little bit.
So it's kinda disappointing.
Now I'm gonna see if the size of the romaine
that you start with makes much of a difference.
Everything else seems to be kinda hanging around,
pushing out leaves.
So the beet, the carrot, the celery,
and the lemongrass is starting to show
a little bit of something growing out of the base.
And then the green onions and the leek,
they are showing roots,
so those can probably go straight
into the soil very soon.
(upbeat music)
Here we are today with the same kitchen scraps.
Isn't that amazing?
So before we talk about this amazing lettuce
and the other plants,
there are some other plants
that are commonly tossed out
because they seem like they're past their prime,
but they are definitely worth
regrowing in the garden.
You probably have some sprouted potatoes
or some old crusty ginger kicking around.
If they are not overly crusty and mushy,
you could probably tuck them into a container
and let them leaf out and keep growing.
So hopefully, over time,
they will produce these delicious
underground parts.
So potatoes, it would be this stem tuber part.
And then for the ginger,
it would be these delicious underground rhizomes.
Same goes with onion, garlic, and shallots
that have started to sprout the green from the top.
Or, if you're cooking,
and you've used the top part
and you're wondering what to do with this base,
if this basal plate
or this short compressed stem area
right above where the roots are coming out,
if that thing is still intact,
you can simply tuck that base
into a shallow dish of soil, give it some water,
it will sprout more green parts
for you to harvest throughout the season.
So with the leafy lettuce
from that living bundle, here they are, amazing.
So after three and a half weeks or so,
living outdoors,
they are practically brand new full-sized plants
that you can definitely harvest from.
So if I'm going to buy those bundles
of living lettuces again,
I'm totally going to do this setup
by putting them into a container.
And with the other lettuces, I did romaine.
So this was the original one, very small,
very little leaves, nothing in terms of roots.
But here's the younger one,
where I chose a larger romaine, big difference.
It has, well, bigger leaves and it has roots.
So this tells me, start off with bigger
and better quality scraps
if you wanna see some results.
Also, the celery is pushing out leaves and roots,
as well as the lemongrass.
So I would say all of these
can go into containers now.
So with the taproot scraps,
I've got the beet and the carrot.
And although we know that it's not gonna generate
a big, bulky taproot for us to eat,
the leaves are where it's at.
And for me personally,
I would choose to use the counter space
for the beets because the greens
are very delicious
and it's more abundant as well.
Whereas the carrot,
even though it is pushing out some fine roots,
what it's going to do
even when we put it into a container
or the ground,
it's just gonna push out more leaves.
And although you can eat the leaves,
when the temperatures rise,
this little plant is going to start
sending up a flower stalk
and the leaves are no longer gonna be tasty,
but that's not entirely a bad thing.
If you let the carrot flower,
a lot of the beneficial insects
like hover flies and lace wings
really love the flowers,
so it's actually worth
tucking this into your garden.
Speaking of flowers,
here are some lovely white flowers,
belonging to Chinese broccoli or kai-lan.
So I thought I would have some fun,
because I've never heard of people
taking cuttings from this plant.
So I followed propagation techniques,
found a node, made a cut underneath
to see if roots would form.
And, here we have it, we have roots.
But Chinese broccoli,
as well as other brassicas
like kales, cabbages and broccoli,
they are biennials,
which means plant wrap up their life cycle
after around a two-ish year cycle.
And with the emergence of flowers,
that signals the end of their life.
And what that means for us hungry humans
is that if we turned this into a plant,
it's actually not gonna pump out more leaves
or stems for us to eat.
So because of this,
I'm not gonna bother tucking this into a container,
knowing that it's on its last legs.
And this applies to celery and carrots as well,
as those are biennials,
but the celery should be okay
with harvesting the leaves
until the flower starts to emerge.
And we really have to keep
a plant's life cycle in mind,
especially when we're growing
these fast-growing plants, like the lettuce.
So with lettuce, they are annual plants,
meaning they have an even shorter life cycle
than the plant that we talked about earlier.
So I'm going to try to prolong
the life of these plants as long as I can
by keeping them cool and hydrated and happy.
But it's going to be inevitable
as we enter the hot summer months
that these are going to bolt.
They're not gonna taste good,
but that's okay, I'm just gonna remove them
and replace them with more leafy kitchen scraps.
So the main takeaway here,
if your goal is to see a faster turnaround
on getting parts to eat,
go for plants that push out leaves and stems.
These vegetative parts grow faster
and more reliably,
and they are the practical choice
for many of our gardens.
But if you are adventurous
and want to experiment,
you can go ahead and grow that kiwi from seed,
just remember to have fun with it.
- As you can see, there's more than meets the eye
with these regrowing kitchen scrap hacks.
Not that they all don't work,
but you just have to know what you're growing
and what you're getting for it.
So hopefully you learned something here
from us over at Epic Gardening.
Until next time, good luck in the garden,
keep growing, but do not grow worthless kitchen scraps.
(lettuce breaking)
(laughing)
(upbeat music)