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  • 24/05/2025
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
00:10using your veg scraps to grow your own? Here's my quick and easy guide to grow
00:15your own root veg basics using nothing but leftovers. So first of all the humble
00:20potato it's a staple of most UK dishes and it's really simple to grow your own.
00:24All you need to do is get some peelings they need to be about two inches across
00:28and crucially they need to have eyes on them. All you need to do let the peeling
00:33grow out and then plant it so it needs about four inches of deep rich soil and
00:39you need to pop them in a sunny spot so you pop them in with the eyes facing
00:44upwards make sure you've got the four inch depth otherwise they won't grow properly
00:48and then about 10 weeks after planting you'll notice potato plants growing and
00:52that's when your potatoes are ready to harvest. Now sweet potatoes are a little
00:57bit more tricky to grow but it is possible so it's worth having a go basically you
01:01need 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 around 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 you do
01:23is twist the leaves off and it's very similar to lettuce which we talked about growing last time
01:28so you pop the leaves into some water and they will begin to sprout and grow roots once those
01:33roots start to grow they're ready to pop outside in soil now sweet potatoes love sandy soil they love
01:39really sunny conditions and they're not very social a bit like us at the moment so make sure
01:43you space them out well. Finally onions literally you cannot go wrong growing these they're really easy to
01:48grow inside or outside all you need to do is cut off the root that's the bottom bit in case you
01:53were wondering leaving about half an inch of onion with it then you simply place it in some soil this
02:00way down so root down into the soil and it will start to grow new roots once that happens this bit
02:06will actually die off so you can remove the onion leave those roots and then it will take a couple of
02:12months and your onions will be underground ready to harvest so if you manage to grow your veg from
02:18scratch with scraps then share your pictures with us on instagram using the hashtag so real homes

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