Normally, when working in the kitchen, I collect all my food prep scraps and throw them into the compost tumbler in my backyard. However, several times on Pinterest, I’ve seen links for how to regrow plants from kitchen scraps and finally decided to give it a try. What an excellent way to reduce waste, right? I decided to experiment with the vegetables and fruits I currently have in the refrigerator, celery and pineapple. I will post my progress in the next few weeks. If these two experiments are successful, I will try other regrowable plants in my future post as well.
CELERY
I researched several articles to figure out the most common and efficient way to regrow celery. I found that it’s really quite simple. All you have to do is take the base of the celery that you’ve cut and place it in a small bowl of water in a sunny part of the kitchen. Basically, the stalks will begin to regrow from the center of the celery. You can see little leaves in the center of the celery! Over the next week they will start to grow tall. I read that the next step is to plant it in a pot; I’ll post my potted plant in a few weeks when my little celery plant has grown a bit!
PINEAPPLE
Regrowing pineapple is a bit more time intensive than celery. First, you need to twist the pineapple leaves crown from the body of the fruit. This is more efficient than cutting off the top. You don’t want to have any of the pineapple flesh attached to the roots (it will rot if you do apparently).
Next you need to cut a little bit at the base of the leaves so that it’s easier for the roots to grow. You should cut to where you can see little brown spots which are the root buds. This part of the plant is really delicate so only trim a little.
The next step is to remove some of the leaves at the base until you have about a one inch bare stalk. The base will take root, but the leaves will rot. It’s good to remove some of them for easier growth.
The very last step, to get your pineapple regrowth project started is to submerge the pineapple stalk in a few inches of water so that the roots can sprout. The leaves need to be outside of the water and the base submerged. I saw several other articles where people used tooth picks to position the pineapple. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any in my kitchen. I just used a small glass so that the base wouldn’t touch the bottom of the glass, giving it space to root. You need to put fresh water into the glass every few days. Basically just wait a few weeks until the roots are substantial. After the pineapple has strong roots, I will make a post about planting both the baby celery and pineapple plants!
For more great zero waste tips, check out our Zero Waste Lifestyle Pinterest board!