Kitchen Counter-top Garden

Throwing away good food is wasteful so I have to admit that when it came to using green onions in the past I had been very wasteful. When I was younger and had a pet rabbit I would save my plant and veggie bits and pieces for them to munch on. Today I tend to see all food scraps as garbage to be cast aside in favor of the chosen parts, for the meal being prepared, I hung on to all the good parts of the fruits and vegetables I was working with and cared less about the other unused parts of those food items. That was until I decided to give an idea I had once read about a try. From and article I read, I learned that several of the food items I was discarding could have provided me with an almost endless supply of romaine lettuce, celery, carrots, and green onion, for cooking if I had only taken the time to do the following, so!

On the topic of green onions, over the winter months when it was too cold to think about planting anything outside, I started regrowing some of the onions I cook with in my kitchen. Pictured here above on top of kitchen my miro-wave oven, my normal position for them is the kitchen window. I have been surprised to see how some plant foods like the green onions can regeneration themselves, hydroponically. So if you use the onion pictured above that goes by the name of spring onions, green onions, or scallions, you can generate your own, close-to-endless supply of green onions to add to some of your favorite dishes.

To get started simply cut off the bulb part of the green onion with the root attached, leave at least a half-inch to one inch of the onion shoot. Stand them upright, submerge the root in water, and you're good to go. You should notice some growth in a few days. Recycling, or changing the water once a week should be enough to keep your food scrap, counter-top, garden growing. You should see green shoots in about a week that, in my case anyway, continued to grow rather rapidly. When the shoots are five to six inches long you will have the option to leave them in their hydroponic growing container, switch them to a planter, or plant them in your outside garden. For me, nothing beats the kitchen counter-top closeness when it comes to keeping my cooking herbs and spices nearby. The green onions will continue to regrow themselves indefinitely, just cut off what you need and allow the green onion plant to grow some more.