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  • 28/05/2025
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
00:10using your veg scraps to grow your own? Here's my quick and easy guide to grow
00:15your own root veg basics using nothing but leftovers. So first of all the humble
00:20potato it's a staple of most UK dishes and it's really simple to grow your own.
00:25All you need to do is get some peelings they need to be about two inches across
00:28and crucially they need to have eyes on them. All you need to do let the peeling
00:33grow out and then plant it so it needs about four inches of deep rich soil and
00:39you need to pop them in a sunny spot so you pop them in with the eyes facing
00:44upwards make sure you've got the four inch depth otherwise they won't grow
00:47properly and then about ten 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.
01:00Basically you need to cut a sweet potato in half and it needs to be suspended in
01:05water like this to allow shoots to grow. Now my potato fits perfectly in this glass
01:10jar but say you had a wider container if you insert toothpicks around the side it
01:16will suspend the potato in the water and allow those shoots to grow. So once they
01:20start sprouting out the top all you do is twist the leaves off and it's very
01:25similar to lettuce which we talked about growing last time. So you pop the leaves
01:29into some water and they will begin to sprout and grow roots. Once those roots
01:33start to grow they're ready to pop outside in soil. Now sweet potatoes love
01:38sandy soil they love really sunny conditions and they're not very social
01:41bit like us at the moment so make sure you space them out well. Finally onions
01:45literally you cannot go wrong growing these they're really easy to grow inside or
01:49outside all you need to do is cut off the root that's the bottom bit in case you were wondering
01:54leaving about half an inch of onion with it then you simply place it in some
01:59soil this way down so root down into the soil and it will start to grow new
02:04roots. Once that happens this bit will actually die off so you can remove the
02:08onion leave those roots and then it will take a couple of months and your
02:13onions will be underground ready to harvest. So if you manage to grow your veg from
02:18scratch with scraps then share your pictures with us on Instagram using the
02:21hashtag so real homes

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