Green onions

I've written before about how I hate throwing away plants. I may have way too many tomato seedlings than I can plant, or more potted bamboos than I know what to do with, but I feel like I owe it to the plant to give it a chance. Sometimes that even means saving plants that you don't even really think of as plants.

Take for instance these green onions. You can buy a handful at any grocery store for about 50 cents. In our house we use these on any mexican food we make (nachos and burritos mainly), in miso soup, and they're a key ingredient in some of our own concoctions.

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The thing is, you only use the green part of these plants, and maybe a bit of the whitish bulb, then throw away the ends -- which are perfectly good plants! Since they usually come with small root stubs emerging already, why not try growing these?

Also, the green ends don't stay fresh too long in the fridge, so you can't buy several bunches to just keep around until you need them. Running out to the store whenever you need them gets to be a pain too, and is impractical when you want to whip up some soup at lunchtime. Having them growing right in your kitchen is the solution.

To do this is really easy. Just leave a bit more of the white stem than you might normally, and put the root ends into a glass with an inch or so of water in it. Put the plants in front of the window if your kitchen has one, or somewhere it can get some light. That's it.

The plants will produce new green "leaves" pretty quickly. You can see where I cut the stems originally in this next photo -- just above the rubberband:

If you really want the plants to be productive, plant them in a pot with some potting mix. I haven't done that yet with these, as they'll stay in the water for a few weeks at least. They'd be happier in some soil though, and would like some fertilizer I think.

The roots do get a little bit funky being in the water all of the time -- is that purplish stuff mildew?

I really should put these into some soil -- the roots are getting too long!

You may want to grow more of these than you would normally buy to ensure that you always have a fresh supply, as you don't want to remove all of the green parts from every single plant each time you harvest. Maybe grow three bunches of these and harvest a third of it every few days. Depending on how much light and fertilizer the plants are getting, that should work pretty well, at least for a while. (Note that fertilizing is optional. The plants above have not been fertilized, but they're starting to look like they might need some.)

It's nice having fresh green onions always available, they're super-easy to grow, and they're plants. Do you need more reasons to give growing them a try?