You can grow items you purchase from the grocery store in your garden according to many people. Let me give you my opinions on growing items from the grocery store to clear this up.
Ginger
It’s very easy to grow ginger from a store-bought rhizome—just make sure it’s smooth, plump, and has multiple protruding nodes. Once you’ve used the amount of ginger you need, leave the rhizome on the counter or in a sunny windowsill until the nodes begin to swell, then cut it into pieces (making sure each piece has at least one node), and let the cut ends heal for a few hours before planting.
Ginger should be planted close to the surface, with the sides of the rhizome covered in soil. Water it regularly and keep it in a humid environment. If you’re gardening in cooler zones (1-7), make a plastic tent to cover the ginger until the plant is well established. Fertilize it with compost tea once a month. You can harvest ginger at any time, but the longer you let it grow, the more you’ll get. Dig up the rhizomes each fall, and repeat.
Garlic
A head garlic is a collection of cloves. You can plant a clove of garlic to grow another head of garlic. The best time to plant garlic cloves is in the fall, when the temperature of the soil is around 60 degrees. Plant the cloves with the root end facing down, six to eight inches apart from each other. Cover the cloves with two inches of soil. If you live in an area where there are hard freezes, put four to six inches of leaf or straw mulch on top. The next summer, when the garlic has flowered, it will be ready to harvest. You can also harvest and dry the garlic flowers, grind them up, and add them to kosher salt to make garlic seasoning salt.
Sweet Potatoes
You can make your store-bought sweet potato sprout by putting toothpicks in the sides of the sweet potato and suspending the bottom of the potato in a jar of water so the bottom is soaking in the water. This is a really fun experiment to do with your kids!
To plant a sweet potato, simply break off a sprout from the potato and plant it.
If you wanted to buy sweet potato slips from a farmer or a store, you would pay $15-20 for 20 sweet potato slips.
You can grow sweet potatoes by sticking them in water.
Potatoes
You can grow potatoes in your garden by cutting up the potato into pieces, making sure each piece has an eye on it, or by planting the whole potato.
If you plant an entire potato, multiple plants will sprout in a small space, yielding smaller potatoes. I’m okay with this because I personally enjoy smaller new potatoes.
To grow larger potatoes, cut the potato into pieces with one eye on each piece. Let the pieces dry and form a scab over the flesh. Plant one piece every 10 inches in your garden. This method will result in larger potatoes, more like what you find at the store.
I’m always concerned that potatoes might absorb toxins from the soil, so I only buy organic potatoes from the grocery store if I’m going to be planting them.
I have known many people who have successfully planted and grown both conventionally raised and organically potatoes.
Growing Grocery Store Potatoes
You can buy seed potatoes from the grocery store to plant in April or May. These potatoes have been stored in a way that allows them to sprout.
Before you plant your potatoes, you need to let them sprout first. Find a dry and cool place, like a garage, and lay them out in a single layer. If you have dairy crates with holes, those are great because they allow for ventilation. Just make sure that rodents can’t get to them.
Hybrid Seeds
The misunderstanding is that when people say hybrids aren’t sustainable, they mean that if you buy a red tomato from the grocery store, plant the seeds, and grow a tomato plant, the plant will not be healthy or produce fruit.
But that hybrid tomato might have been developed for a certain quality, and the seeds won’t be stabilized.
The tomatoes you get from this plant might not be the best quality.
Open-Pollinated Seeds
If you want to grow a tomato plant in your garden, try to plant open-pollinated seeds of an heirloom variety or a newer hybrid variety.
If the seeds are stabilized, they will be listed as open-pollinated, which means that you can save the seeds from it, and you will get a plant that produces fruit like that parent fruit.
However, that does not mean you cannot grow food from hybrid seeds.
My Aunt Martha, who is no longer with us (my cousin Amy’s mom), loved saving seeds so much that she would take the seeds out of her salad at a restaurant, fold them up in a napkin, and take them home to grow.
She looked for seeds everywhere she went, taking them out of grocery store produce, food at restaurants, and flowers that had been cut off.
As long as the grocery store seed is mature, it will grow food.
If you take the fully-matured seeds from a watermelon you bought at the grocery store and plant them, they will grow.
A cucumber that is picked early will be tender. The seeds in an early picked cucumber will also be tender and not fully developed so they will not be able to grow a new plant.
Basil & Other Herbs
You can even propagate it in water. Many herbs can be easily propagated (such as thyme, rosemary, oregano, etc.), but basil is probably the one that propagates the quickest. You can even propagate it in water.
To grow your own basil plant, simply break off a sprig at the base of the stem and place it in a cup of water.
After waiting a week or so, you will see roots growing. You can then transplant it into some soil and you will have a new plant.
Now, if you buy grocery store plants don’t go and immediately plant them in the garden. They will shrivel up and die so quickly because they haven’t been hardened off to natural light or cool temperatures. The grocery store plants are grown indoors with artificial lighting and will need to acclimate to your region.
Take your plant outside and set it out for an hour in the morning and evening. This will help it get acclimated to the outdoors and prepare it for when you can leave it out all day long. Be sure to increase the time it’s out by an hour or two each day until there is no danger of frost.
The large basil plant I purchased from the grocery store can easily be split into 10-12 smaller plants. I can start them by placing the cuttings in jars of water and then, after a few weeks, transfer them to starter cups with soil. This way I will have a bunch of basil plants ready for the garden in no time!
Chayote
If you are looking to grow squash, chayote is a particularly interesting and prolific option. Chayote is a pale green to white, pear-shaped squash with a slightly nutty flavor. The young shoots, fruit, and mature tubers are edible. One plant is all you need for a family of four, and chayote is a perennial so once you grow this squash, you are set!
Chayote requires very warm to hot temperatures and 120-150 frost-free days to reach harvest. The vines can reach up to 30 feet and should be supported by a trellis. Plant the whole fruit 4” deep, with the fat end down and at an angle so the stem end is level with the surface of the soil. If you are planting more than one plant, space them 10 feet apart. Give plants regular water and do not let them dry out between waterings. You can side dress the plants with compost tea every six weeks during the growing season. Harvest when the fruit is 4-6” in diameter before the flesh becomes hard. Cut the plant back after harvest and protect it with a layer of thick mulch before the first freeze.
Spring Onions
Cut the tops off of your spring onions and save the bottoms to plant. You can either set the bottoms in a shallow bowl of water or plant them directly in your garden. You should see new green growth within a few days.
Onions
-> You can also regrow red, white and yellow onions in the same way asspring onions. Cut the onion lengthwise to expose the center “thumb.” Remove and eat the outer layers of the onion until just the center remains. Place the center in a shallow bowl of water for a few days before transplanting it into the garden. Keep plants moist, but not soggy, until established. Onions are ready to harvest when the bulb pushes up through the surface of the soil and the foliage has yellowed.
Beans
If you want to grow beans, you can either plant them directly in the ground or germinate them first. To germinate them, place the dried seeds on a wet paper towel and cover with another damp towel. They should sprout in 3-5 days and are ready to transplant any time after that. Also, remember to let one bean plant serves as your seed stock for the following year.
Tomatillos
Tomatillos are a easier to regrow then tomatoes, All you have to do is wait for the tomatillo to ripe then slice it open and squeeze the tiny seeds into pots of potting soil. Lightly cover and keep well-watered until you have established seedlings. Transplant the seedlings in your garden.
Avocado
You can grow avocados at home by placing the pit in an ice tray filled with water. Put the tray in a sunny spot, and roots will soon begin to grow. Transplant the avocado tree into a pot filled with potting soil once it has its first true leaves. Prune the tree back to 3” once it reaches 6”, and then prune it back to 6” once it reaches a foot. After the second pruning, you can transplant the tree to a location with full sun.
Pineapple
The text describes how to grow a pineapple. To grow a pineapple, you need to cut the leafy top off the pineapple 1/2″ below the leaves. Then, you need to pick off some of the lowest leaves by hand. After that, you need to trim the outer pineapple portion of the crown with a sharp knife until you see small, brownish bumps around the stem. These are the root buds. Finally, you need to allow the cut to dry out and heal on your counter for two days before planting.
To grow a pineapple plant, put the pineapple top in soil with the base of the leaves covered. Water it thoroughly and put it in a bright spot out of direct sunlight. Keep the soil moist until roots grow, which should take 6-8 weeks. Once the plant is established, it can tolerate more light and less frequent watering.
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