(Re)growing herbs & vegetables
Spring is here! That means your plants can finally end their winter depression and start growing again. This is also the time to cut cuttings (stekjes) and exchange them if your plant is big enough! Exchanging cuttings is a cheap and more sustainable way to get more plants instead of buying new ones. Just google how you get a cutting from your specific plant and exchange them with friends. There even are Facebookpages with thousands of members who want to exchange cuttings with each other!
This blog is about regrowing. Apart from your own plants, you can start experimenting regrowing other plants like vegetables! We from the Green Office tried some out for you.
Herbs
Are you also sad every time your basil plant from the supermarket dies? The herb plants you buy in the supermarket are usually quite weak. You can try to repot them in new soil, this way they have more growing space. There are also other tricks, like the following. I read this online and I could not believe it. I bought some mint in the Albert Heijn, already cut off. I had some leftover so I cut those stems sideways and I put them in water. (Bonus tip: when you put cuttings in a glass to root, use a small glass like a champagne glass e.g., it will take less time for the plant to fill the water with nutrients it needs to root).
After 1,5 weeks, roots actually came out of the mint! When there were enough roots, I put them in the ground and now new ones spring out all the time.
Now mint is also kind of an ‘easy’ herb to grow. Chives are also easy to root. Basil likes sunlight and needs more warmth and attention, and a lot of water. There are many more herbs you can experiment with, like parsley and thyme. Thyme is, like mint, a strong herb and it usually grows fast. Grow the herbs you use the most in the kitchen, it saves a lot of money in the supermarket and it’s more sustainable, win win! ;). Lastly, if you want to know about (re)growing herbs, with some more culinary insights, you can also check the blog on growing and blending your own herbs at home.
Vegetables
Ready for the next step? Some vegetables you can also regrow at home! The basic rule is quite simple: If it has clear roots, you can put it in water and it will just regrow! The most common examples are spring onions and leek. However, it will take some time before you have a full grown leek again. There are many more examples on the internet, so look around in your kitchen and think twice when you want to throw your vegetable waste away.
You can also regrow lettuce like romaine or bok choy with the same principle. Put the trunk in water and watch how your lettuce grows big again.
Spring is also the perfect time if you want to try the well-known avocado pit plant. The plant needs warmth and sun, so now is the time to put your pit in the water, so it’s rooted in summer. It will take a long time before you get avocado’s though, this plant is more for the eye ;).
Which plants do you plan on regrowing? Let us know!
By Salomé Barnhoorn