9 Foods You Can Buy Once And Regrow Forever!

Last updated on

If you treasure food, one person’s trash might be your treasure. Most people just throw away food scraps like avocado seeds, carrot tops, and onion bottoms, but instead of filling your compost (or trash), why not start a small home garden?

You can use the parts of the fruits and veggies that you don’t juice to regrow the plant. Then you can cultivate your own foods for snacks, salads, juices, and so much more.

Reduce waste, save money, and provide your own nutrition with these tips to grow your own fruits and vegetables from the scraps you don’t use.


1. Avocado

There’s so much you can do with an avocado’s seed, but regrowing more avocado might be the best. Not every seed will produce roots, so it’s best to start with 2 or 3 at once.

Clean the seeds under cold water and towel off. Push 4 toothpicks into the seed spaced evenly apart and use them to balance the seed over a wide-mouthed jar or dish. Make sure the seed is pointy-side-up.

Fill the dish or jar with enough water that the seed is half submerged. Place the jar in a sunlit area, and change the water daily. After 3-6 weeks the seed will split. After several more weeks a stem will begin to grow. Be patient.

In approximately 3 months your tree will be about 7 inches tall. Plant it in a 10-inch pot that has adequate drainage. Fill with soil, press the avocado sapling into it root-side down so the top half is uncovered. Keep in a sunny area and water regularly. Transfer to an outdoor garden when it outgrows the pot. Avocado trees can grow very tall.


2. Carrot Greens

Save the next carrot tops and them to grow more carrots. Place a carrot top (or tops) in a bowl cut-side down and fill the bowl with about an inch of water—enough to half-cover the tops. Place the dish on a sunny windowsill. Change the water daily.

Eventually the tops will sprout shoots—when they do, plant them in soil. Careful not to cover the new shoots. Harvest the greens to taste—pull earlier for baby-greens or wait longer for full-grown.

3. Cilantro

Place cilantro stems in a bowl of water and place the bowl in a sunny area. Change the water every other day. Once the stems sprout plenty of roots, plant them in a pot.

New shoots will appear in a few weeks and in a few months you’ll have a full-grown plant. Harvest the leaves as needed, but don’t strip a stem of all it’s leaves at once.


grow-celery4. Celery

Celery is another vegetable that is very easy to regrow. The next time you buy celery for juicing, cut off the stalk three inches from the base.

Place a bit of water in a shallow bowl and put the base in this. Put the bowl at the window sill so that it gets direct sunlight.

After about seven days, leaves will begin to grwo from the base. Transfer it to your garden in soil and wait for it to grow fully.


4. Ginger

Pull off a piece of ginger from a fresh chunk and place it in potting soil with the smallest buds facedown.

Place the ginger in soil that receives only indirect sunlight and in a few days the ginger will grow new shoots and roots.

When it’s time to harvest, pull up the entire plant, roots and all. You can remove a piece of the rhizome (the underground part) and replant it to continue growing.


5. Hot Pepper

Pick your favorite spicy peppers and harvest the seeds to plant. Plant them in soil in a sunny area, and get ready—peppers tend to grow fast. Keep repeating the process to keep reaping the peppery rewards.


6. Onions

This is one of the easiest vegetables to regrow.  Simply place an onion, bottom in the ground and it will start regrowing roots.

Once roots appear, remove the old onion bottom and allow the roots to continue growing. Harvest onions when fully grown.


7. Mushroom

Remove the mushroom’s cap but hold on to the stalk. Plant the stalks in soil and cover everything except the very top of the stalks. Harvest when fully grown. You’ll know fairly quickly whether the mushroom will regrow—in a few days you will either see the stem grow or rot.


8. Potatoes

Cut the potatoes into two pieces making sure each half has at least 2 eyes. Let sit at room temperature overnight or for a few days, until they’re dry to the touch. Once dry, plant the potatoes about 1 foot apart in 8 inches of soil. When they’re fully grown potatoes can be harvested for several months, even after the plant dies.


9. Tomatoes

Save the seeds from the messy insides of tomatoes, rinse them off and let dry thoroughly.

Plant the tomato seeds in rich potting soil in an indoor planter. Once the sprouts are 3-4 inches tall, transfer the growing plant outside.

Tomato plants can be grown all year round with a little sunshine. Plant in a sunny area and water daily.


There are so many more plants that can and should regrow from their scraps. To find the easy way to regrow other vegetables and herbs, look here.

Also check out step-by-step instructions on sprouting your own wheatgrass and grow an endless supply of garlic.




About Sara Ding



Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: