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Gardener tests whether you can regrow scraps from store-bought veggies to make a full garden

He put viral videos to the test in a real garden with some impressive results.

People try to extend the lives of their veggies by regrowing in the kitchen, but does it work in a garden?

The way plants provide food for humans and animals alike is one of the coolest things about our planet. And the way humans are honing the art of agriculture, learning to farm and garden most effectively (and hopefully sustainably) to feed the masses is one of the coolest things about humans.

Home gardening has long been a supplementary source of food for families around the world, and there's no shortage of books, websites, classes, video tutorials, and more to teach people how to do it. As many beginners find when they get started, gardening is a bit more complicated than simply putting some seeds in the ground and waiting for them to grow. You have soil composition, sunlight exposure, watering schedules, hardiness zones, pests, and other considerations that differ for each plant.

But in some ways, growing food can be less complicated than we might think, as we see demonstrated in viral videos like this one:

@creative_explained

Every day we throw out food scraps, when so much of it can be used in other ways, even regrowing food! 🤩🌱 . #upcycle #savemoney #regrow #kitchenscraps #garden #gardening #plants #plantsofinstagram #gardenlife #lifehack #hacks #diy #recycle #sustainableliving #howto #plantstagram #creativeexplained #magic #organicgardening #instadaily #tiktokstar #plantfood

Regrowing vegetables from portions of store-bought veggies seems like something that might work or might not, or that might only work a little bit for a little while. Even if you can get some romaine lettuce to sprout from a stub in your kitchen, does that mean you could plant it in a garden and have it grow into a full-fledged plant? Is it really that simple?

James Prigioni explored the question, "What happens when you regrow veggies from the store?" on his gardening channel in a video that's been watched nearly 5 million times. For 135 days, Prigioni grew onions, carrots, beets, ginger, tomatoes and more to see how the store-bought stubs would fare in a real garden. Here are the results:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

He started by soaking the veggie scraps in water in a glass cake pan, then planted them in a raised bed with soil. He covered the bed with a shade cloth for two weeks to avoid them budding plants from getting too much direct sunlight. After just two weeks, there was already new green growth coming from everything he planted except the lettuce and cabbage.

In hindsight, he said, he could have spouted the lettuce and cabbage in water first, but he really wanted to see what would happen if he just planted then as is. The one whole onion he planted turned into five onions. The beet top that survived grew into funky-shaped but much larger beet that tasted god. The carrot tops grew some long, thin carrots expanding out from the center. The potato he dropped in the ground whole turned into a harvest of over a dozen potatoes. The tomato top, which included some seeds, turned into a large tomato plant, and so did the ginger. The garlic grew greens, but because of the season, it didn't grow into bulbs.

Vegetables GIFGiphy

With a couple of exceptions, the experiment was a rousing success. Apparently, you can grow a lot more vegetables from vegetables than people may realize. The one thing he recommends is to buy organic veggies if you're going to try planting scraps, as non-organic produce sometimes has sprout inhibitors on it that might interfere with your experiment.

People in the comments are sharing their own experiences with growing veggies from veggies:

"Last year, I bought a 1.5 lbs bag of purple baby potatoes in my local ShopRite. I couldn’t find purple potato seeds, so I decided to take a chance. There were 22 baby potatoes and all of them had eyes with some growth protruding, so I knew they would take off. Sure enough, I got an excellent crop out of those 22 baby potatoes. We enjoyed them until the end of year and then somehow forgot about them. When in March I realized we had still about ten pounds of potatoes, they had already started to sprout. In April, I planted some and the rest donated to the community garden. Both – us and the community gardeners – enjoyed huge crop of delicious purple potatoes. In the past, I occasionally planted store-bought potatoes when they were sprouting, but this was the first time I deliberately purchased a bag of potatoes just for planting. I am glad I did."

potatoes, growing potatoesIt's surprisingly simple to grow potatoes from potato parts.Photo credit: Canva

"As a child of a potato farmer, if you cut that potato in 3rds so that each had a sprout, you end up with 3 plants."

"My Mom was a farmer's daughter from the Depression Era and taught me to grow potatoes from the eyes or sprouts. You simply cut them, making sure each cut has an eye, and plant them into the soil. I did this and ended up with more than I needed. My mom and I canned potatoes for days. One of my best memories."

"I love how easy tomatoes are to grow. We planted some tomatoes and when they grew our dog started going over, picking one off, walking a few steps and eating it. After she passed, tomato plants started growing all over the yard. It was like a little gift from her."

"I'm 69, when I was a little kid, my elderly neighbors, threw all their scraps, from veggies in a certain spot of the garden, they would get food from there, it amazed me, I thought that was so cool!"

"Have been doing the same kind of replanting...onions, carrots, tomatoes, beets, and now cilantro, pak chop, etc. When I clear out the fridge...anything that looks like it will regrow goes in the raised bed. It is fun."

You can follow The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni on YouTube.

Dean Xavier/Unsplash/@DestiniUmajje/Twitter

A Twitter thread declared peas to be the "nastiest vegetable."

Everyone has that one vegetable that turns them into a sneering 3-year-old. You know what I mean. The one you straight-up refuse to eat and if it was the only food available to you, you'd rather starve then let it touch your lips. Some people just can't get behind spinach and apparently a lot of people dislike turnips, others will say Brussels sprouts are the absolute worst. One woman on Twitter declared that peas are the "nastiest" vegetable, and while some people agreed with her, others chimed in to give their opinions.


For some of us, our distaste for certain veggies is something concrete, like a traumatic memory. Maybe when you were a kid, you had them prepared a particular way and it soured you on the veggie for the rest of your life. Or it could be an aesthetic choice—some vegetables taste delicious but don't look it. You do eat with your eyes first, after all. For others, there's the issue of taste. Some people simply can't eat a vegetable because it tastes terrible to them.


In 2019, scientists revealed that there are people called "super-tasters" who have a genetic predisposition to taste food differently than others. For super-tasters, leafy dark green veggies like broccoli, Brussels and cabbage taste extremely bitter and unappetizing. According to a CNN article on the subject, people with this "bitter" gene are 2.6 times more likely to not eat as many vegetables in general because of the bitter taste of others.

“So that [bitter] vegetable is disliked, and because people generalize, soon all vegetables are disliked,” Valerie Duffy, a University of Connecticut professor and expert in the study of food and taste, told CNN. “If you ask people, ‘Do you like vegetables?’ They don’t usually say, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t like this, but I like these others.’ People tend to either like vegetables or not.”

When user DES made her declaration, the responses were swift.

But for all the veggie haters out there, there are people who'll come to their defense as well.


Growing your own organic herbs, vegetables, and fruits is a great way to eat healthier and, at the same time, do something good for the environment. Unfortunately, a lot of people assume they can't grow a garden because they don't have enough space, time, or know-how. But that's not actually the case. Or at least, it's not any more. Thanks to an amazing high tech gadget called the Click & Grow Smart Gardens, these days anyone can grow their own organic produce with the touch of a button, no matter where they live.



Fully Automated Gardening? Yes Please

What exactly is the Smart Garden? Click & Grow calls it the Keurig of plants. And that's actually a pretty great description.

The Click & Grow Smart Garden is a fully automated gardening system that lets anybody grow herbs, fruits, vegetables, and flowers year round, in any environment, with absolutely no effort or horticultural knowledge. Like a Keurig coffee maker, all you have to do is insert a pod, fill the tank with water, and press the button. Technology takes care of the rest.

Click & Grow has over 50 different pre-seeded 100-percent biodegradable plant pods to choose from, including tomatoes, peppers, arugula, green leaf lettuce, basil, chives, cilantro, petunias, pansies, lavender, and so much more. You can also buy "blank" smart soil pods and use your own seeds to create your own custom plant pods. The possibilities are almost endless.

You don't have to know anything about gardening to use the Click & Grow Smart Garden. However, if you'd like to learn, the Click & Grow companion app can make you a plant expert. Simply check in with the app daily and it will explain exactly what's happening during each stage of the growing cycle.

How Does It Work?

The Click & Grow Smart Garden uses advanced horticultural technology specifically designed to speed up growth and maximize yields. This technology includes:

  • Biodome Sprouting: lids cover the seed pods during the initial growing phase, creating a greenhouse effect that induces faster sprouting.
  • Grow Lights: professional grade LED grow lights with enhanced light spectra bring about faster germination. These lights turn on and off automatically to mimic the natural light cycle, making sure plants get the exact amount and type of light they need to thrive.
  • Automatic watering: sensors detect moisture levels and automatically water your plants when needed, with each reservoir tank refill lasting about one month.
  • Smart Soil: instead of regular soil, Smart Garden seed pods use a proprietary nano material created by Click & Grow. This material keeps soil pH balanced, automatically releases nutrients in sync with the plant life cycle, and contains micro oxygen pockets to give plants ample breathing room and nutrients when the smart soil is wet.

All this tech wouldn't be very appealing if it cost an arm and a leg to run. Luckily, the Click & Grow Smart Garden is incredibly efficient. It uses 95-percent less water than traditional agriculture, while producing faster growing cycles without toxic pesticides or fertilizers. Meanwhile, the Smart Garden's efficient LED grow lights cost roughly $5 to $15 per year to operate. That's probably less than you'd spend on gas going back and forth to the nursery to get supplies for a traditional backyard garden.

Of course, not every prospective indoor gardener has the same needs. Some people just want a minimalist countertop unit to grow their favorite herbs. Others want a full-blown indoor farm. That's why Click & Grow created several different Smart Garden models with variable grow capacities.

Click & Grow Smart Garden 3

As the name suggests, the Smart Garden 3 is capable of growing three plants at a time. Measuring just 12 inches wide and 5 inches deep, with a max height of 19 inches, this model fits almost anywhere. That makes it perfect for anyone with extremely limited space, or who isn't quite ready for a bigger indoor garden.

At just $99.95, the Smart Garden 3 is the most affordable of Click & Grow's automated gardening systems. It's available in four different colors and comes with the companion app as well as a complementary set of three basil plant pods.

Click & Grow Smart Garden 27

For those who live by the motto "go big or go home" there's the Smart Garden 27. Though, in this case, "big" is a relative term. Consisting of three Smart Garden 9 units plus a stylish pine plant stand, the Smart Garden 27 is capable of growing a whopping 27 plants at a time. However, it barely takes up any room. The entire system has a footprint of 26 inches by 10 inches, and it stands just 47 inches tall. So it's roughly the size of a small bookcase.

The Smart Garden 27 is certainly a more significant investment than the Smart Garden 3. However, if your household consumes a lot of fresh organic product, it won't take long for the Smart Garden 27 to start paying for itself. It's available in three different colors and comes with the companion app as well as a complementary set of nine basil plant pods, nine lettuce plant pods, and nine tomato plant pods.

Good For You AND The Planet

Eating local and organic helps you reduce your carbon footprint and cut back on the amount of harmful chemicals that wind up in our watershed. And that used to be pretty expensive. But thanks to the Click & Grow Smart Garden, we can all grow affordable organic produce right in our own homes with just the touch of a button.

If that sounds good to you, click here to learn more about Click & Grow Smart Gardens, today.

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The celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is currently on a tear with his #AdEnough campaign, which promotes a new sugar tax. If put into effect, the sugar tax would jack up the prices of junk food in hopes of promoting healthier eating and better cooking practices.

"This a tax for good; this is a tax for love; this is designed to protect and give to the most disadvantaged communities," Oliver said, and the tax would be part of an ongoing effort to fight childhood obesity.

However, Oliver is far from the first to propose a sugar tax to fight obesity and health issues, and this measure giving to 'the most disadvantaged communities' is not only inaccurate, but helps promote classist ideals about working class parenting.

In a now viral thread, Twitter user @sibylpain broke down why she thinks these taxes are misguided, and how they end up punishing the poor people they claim to uplift.




She opened up by sharing how her dad worked around the clock to support her brother and her, and their mother was financially out of the picture, but would show up to the home during violent outbursts.




She then went on to lay out the logistics, and how her father's work schedule only allowed him an average of four hours of sleep, and he neither had time nor money to buy food to make from scratch.








She went on to say that at the end of the day, it's far healthier for kids to eat junk food than not eat at all because their parents can no longer afford cheap food under a sugar tax. Most loving parents want the best for their kids, but if you're saddled with 60 hour work weeks, on top of potential disabilities or depression, getting lectured about not cooking stir fry is ultimately unhelpful.






To close out the thread, she laid out actual policies that would better public health and support low income families, those of which include affordable housing measures, an increased minimum wage, and better support for people with disabilities.






At the end of the day, if people have more money and time to make healthier choices, they likely will, but taxing people for buying cheap and accessible food (which usually falls under the umbrella of junk food) ends up punishing families trying to get by.

This article originally appeared on SomeeCards. You can read it here.