How To Regrow Vegetables From Scraps

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

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

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

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

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

00:26some peelings. They need to be about 2 inches across and crucially they need to have eyes

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

00:364 inches of deep rich soil and you need to pop them in a sunny spot. So you pop them

00:42in with the eyes facing upwards. Make sure you've got the 4 inch depth otherwise they

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:27last time. So you pop the leaves into some water and they will begin to sprout and grow

01:32roots. Once those roots start to grow they're ready to pop outside in soil. Now sweet potatoes

01:38love sandy soil, they love really sunny conditions and they're not very social, a bit like us

01:42at the moment, so make sure you space them out well. Finally onions. Literally you cannot

01:47go wrong growing these, they're really easy to grow inside or outside. All you need to

01:51do is cut off the root, that's the bottom bit in case you were wondering, leaving about

01:55half an inch of onion with it. Then you simply place it in some soil this way down, so root

02:02down into the soil and it will start to grow new roots. Once that happens this bit will

02:06actually die off so you can remove the onion, leave those roots and then it will take a

02:11couple of months and your onions will be underground ready to harvest. So if you manage

02:17to grow your veg from scratch with scraps then share your pictures with us on Instagram

02:21using the hashtag SoRealHomes.