Gardening from Scrap #2

Whilst we have been enjoying the spoils of our previous Gardening from Scraps endeavour, we have been waiting patiently for some rosemary sprigs to take root. I read recently (on Pinterest of course) that if you strip away leaves from the bottom inch or two of a sprig of rosemary and place it in water, it will grow roots and you have yourself a new rosemary plant. This seemed like another fun gardening activity for the kids.

In truth, it took a month to grow all the roots you can see in the photo above, and I am sure we could have planted them weeks ago, but life with 3 is busy and the constant rain of late hasn't helped. We also lost a couple of the sprigs when my husband thought I had placed them in a glass jar on the windowsill for his cooking convenience. Fail!

Nonetheless, the rain has finally stopped, the husband has been told not to touch, and we finally planted our little rosemary sprigs in the veggie patch.

What have you been planting this winter?

Gardening from Scrap

That is not a typo - we have embraced gardening from scraps left over in the kitchen. Who knew there were so many vegetables which can be regrown from kitchen scraps? Well this person did obviously and I stumbled upon their blog through Pinterest of course.

This proved a fantastic gardening project with the kids. First we watched the cut shallot bulbs sprout new shoots in a glass with some water for a few days.

Then everyone enjoyed helping to plant the new plants into the garden and watching them grow more and more. 

The best thing about shallots (and leeks, which we also recycled) is that the kids can see them growing bigger everyday, they grow so fast! Finally everyone loved picking veggies fresh from the garden to put in our dinner!

So far we have recycled shallots, leeks and potatoes (still waiting to harvest the potatoes). We are considering recycling some garlic and maybe even an avocado (though that will be a long term goal as avocados take 5-7 years to fruit). And we have an unexpected pumpkin plant curling across the backyard from the neighbours compost heap. We have had no luck so far with encouraging any pumpkins to grow, despite partaking in some artificial pollination of the male and female flowers.

Have you recycled any kitchen scraps into your veggie patch?