I’m all about using up leftovers to make new dishes, such as making stock from meat bones and vegetable scraps, or using the remains of one meal to make an entirely different meal. But there’s another way to utilize leftover food that I find truly amazing.

Did you know you can regrow vegetables from kitchen scraps?

Some of what you can regrow aren’t exactly the same as the original plant (e.g. you can’t grow carrots from carrot scraps—but you can grow carrot greens!), but it’s still pretty awesome that you can get something out of essentially nothing, in the sense that you probably were going to toss those carrot scraps into the trash or the compost bin.

This is also a way to grow some vegetables indoors or just to propagate new plants that you can grow later in your outdoor garden. If nothing else, this could be a fun experiment to try with your kids, even if the plants don’t produce any “fruit”!

How to Regrow Vegetables from Scraps

I’m covering the most basic vegetables that you are probably already buying at the grocery store, and some of the processes to regrow them are more complicated, so I’m linking elsewhere. Hopefully this gives you some inspiration, but feel free to do your own research as to other ways to regrow vegetables!

Cabbage and lettuce

To regrow cabbage or lettuce (romaine, iceberg, etc.), place the bottom of the head in water in shallow bowl and put it in a sunny place and change the water as needed to make sure it’s clean. Within a few weeks, you should start to have enough for a salad!

Celery

As with lettuce and cabbage, place the bottom in a glass or jar with water in a sunny place and change the water as needed. As it grows, you can cut the growth off and store it in the fridge.

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