How To Grow Root Vegetables From Scraps | Real Homes - video Dailymotion

Rather than throwing your scraps in the bin or the compost, why not grow new vegetables?! Here's your quick guide to growing root veg from scraps!

Transcript

00:00 Reducing food waste has never been more important, but did you know you could be using your veg

00:11 scraps to grow your own? Here's my quick and easy guide to growing your own root veg

00:16 basics using nothing but leftovers. So first of all, the humble potato. It's a staple

00:21 of most UK dishes and it's really simple to grow your own. All you need to do is get

00:26 some peelings. They need to be about two inches across and crucially they need to have eyes

00:30 on them. All you need to do, let the peeling grow out and then plant it. So it needs about

00:36 four inches of deep, rich soil. You need to pop them in a sunny spot. So you pop them

00:42 in with the eyes facing upwards. Make sure you've got the four inch depth, otherwise

00:46 they won't grow properly. And then about 10 weeks after planting, you'll notice potato

00:51 plants growing and that's when your potatoes are ready to harvest. Now sweet potatoes are

00:56 a little bit more tricky to grow, but it is possible, so it's worth having a go. Basically,

01:01 you need to cut a sweet potato in half and it needs to be suspended in water like this

01:06 to allow shoots to grow. Now my potato fits perfectly in this glass jar, but say you had

01:12 a wider container. If you insert toothpicks around the side, it will suspend the potato

01:17 in the water and allow those shoots to grow. So once they start sprouting out the top,

01:22 all you do is twist the leaves off and it's very similar to lettuce, which we talked about

01:26 growing last time. So you pop the leaves into some water and they will begin to sprout and

01:31 grow roots. Once those roots start to grow, they're ready to pop outside in soil. Now

01:37 sweet potatoes love sandy soil. They love really sunny conditions and they're not very

01:41 social, a bit like us at the moment, so make sure you space them out well. Finally, onions.

01:45 Literally, you cannot go wrong growing these. They're really easy to grow inside or outside.

01:50 All you need to do is cut off the root, that's the bottom bit in case you were wondering,

01:54 leaving about half an inch of onion with it. Then you simply place it in some soil this

02:00 way down, so root down into the soil and it will start to grow new roots. Once that happens,

02:06 this bit will actually die off. So you can remove the onion, leave those roots and then

02:11 it will take a couple of months and your onions will be underground, ready to harvest. So

02:16 if you manage to grow your veg from scratch with scraps, then share your pictures with

02:20 us on Instagram using the hashtag #SowRealHomes.

02:23 [Music]