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!
Here's your quick guide to growing root veg from scraps!
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LifestyleTranscript
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]