• 2 months ago
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.

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