We have previously seen how we can grow a plant from seeds that you can easily find at home. We hope that your plants are doing well and that you’re watering them regularly. We would love to see your progress! Share photos of your plants on facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #esploramalta. If you have missed this, you can find this here – https://esplora.org.mt/growing-our-own-food-from-seed-to-plant/.
This is our tomato plant; we used a seed from a tomato used in our salad while preparing the previous blog.
This time round, we are going to regrow vegetables from food scraps. Keep an eye on what is being used in the kitchen and instead of throwing some food scraps in the organic bin, let’s use them for our new project!
Different plants need different parts of their ‘bodies’ to regrow a new plant. Today we’re going to be taking a look at five different vegetables:
Place these set ups in a well-lit area such as a windowsill. Make sure to always keep them wet and change the water every day so that it does not start to smell.
Observe what happens every day and keep a record. It helps to remember what worked and what didn’t.
After a few days you can notice that tiny leaves will start to grow again, followed by tiny roots. When you see roots, it means that it is now time to plant them in soil!
Like most science experiments and projects, you might need to do multiple trials. Not everything will work out on the first trial. But don’t give up! Even though it might be easier to just buy your vegetables, you won’t get the same satisfaction as when you grow your own.
Furthermore, keep in mind that it is normal for a lettuce for example to start becoming dry and brown in colour. Do not get disheartened; it is the central part which will re-grow. You should be able to notice slow growth each day. Give it a couple of further days until you notice the growth of roots and transfer it to soil. This ensures better taste than if regrown using just water.
What we are actually doing here is cloning plants; meaning that the vegetable plant that will grow will be an exact copy of the previous vegetable plant.. For example, when we grow carrots from food scraps, the cells near the top are able to start growing again and make a new carrot plant that is the same as the old one.
Some plants make new plants by themselves without any help from us. For example spider plants and strawberry plants grow runners which are like a long string emerging from the mother plant. At the tip of the runner there is a baby plant which is an exact copy of the mother plant. As soon as this baby plant touches soil, it grow into a plants on its own.
This is called asexual reproduction since the plant does not need the help of another plant to reproduce. Sometimes we grow new plants by using cuttings from other plants. This is also plant cloning. It is common for gardeners to use rooting hormones at the base of the cutting because they speed up the process by helping the cuttings to grow roots.
Share your results with us by tagging us @esploramalta on facebook.
