© 2014 The National Gardening Association. All rights reserved.18

With a carton or two and a pinch of creativity you can devise some very imaginative indoor gardens from your kitchen leftovers! Kitchen scrap gardening is when you grow plants from items you’d normally throw in your compost bucket . Kids love this idea, and it’s a great way to reinforce the sustainable living concepts of recycling and reusing . Plus, it’s a kick to grow new plants from old plant parts .

First, scout your kitchen and refrigerator for potential vegetable and fruit candidates . Some of the best are sweet potatoes, avocados, and carrots . Believe it or not, you can use these and many other vegetables and fruits to propagate new plants . Here’s how to start your kitchen scrap garden .

Prepare Your CartonsSingle-serving milk or juice cartons work well for kitchen scrap gardening projects . Clean the cartons . Then cut off the tops to make approximately 3 ½ inch tall containers .

Grow an Avocado Plant from a Pit

It’s fun to sprout the big seed of an avocado, one that can eventually grow into a large tree when planted outdoors in a warm climate . Your young avocado will be of much smaller stature, but it makes an attractive houseplant that can thrive on a windowsill for many seasons .

Materials Needed

• 1 avocado

• Toothpicks

• Single-serving milk or juice carton, cleaned

Step 1. Remove the pit from an avocado fruit and run it under water to clean off any pulp . Let the pit dry for a day or two .

Step 2. Poke three or four toothpicks into the pit evenly around its middle . Suspend the pit in the carton pot with the broad end of the pit pointing downward and the narrower end pointing upward by resting the toothpicks on the rim of the carton . Add water until it covers the bottom inch of the pit . Add more water as necessary as evaporation causes the water level to drop .

Step 3. Place the pot in a warm spot with bright light, but not in direct sun . Then wait for roots and shoots to emerge . Cool! But this project does take some patience . It may take a month or more for roots and shoots to appear .

Step 4. Once a shoot with leaves appears, move your plant to a spot that gets lots of direct sun; a south facing window is best . When the young plant is about 6 inches tall, cut it back to 3 inches to encourage strong roots to form .

Step 5. When the plant has formed new leaves again and a good root system has developed, replant the pit in in a new, larger pot filled with potting soil, leaving the top half of the seed exposed above the soil level . Be sure the pot has drainage holes in the bottom .

Step 6. To keep your avocado plant thriving, give it lots of sun and keep the soil evenly moist but never soggy . Fertilize regularly in spring and summer with a balanced houseplant fertilizer . Pinch back the shoots to encourage bushy growth .

Kitchen Scrap Gardening

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© 2014 The National Gardening Association. All rights reserved. 19

Transform a Tuber

It’s easy to grow new plants from sweet potato tubers . As with the avocado pit, suspend a sweet potato over a water-filled carton pot by poking three toothpicks in a circle into the middle of the tuber and resting the toothpicks on the rim of the carton so that the narrower, pointed half of the tuber is submerged in the water . Place the carton in a warm, sunny spot .

Soon roots will begin to sprout from the portion in the water, and usually within a few weeks, stems and leaves will begin to grow from the top of the tuber . To keep your sweet potato as a houseplant, carefully transplant it into a container of potting soil once a good root system has developed, burying the tuber completely in the soil .

Off With Their Heads!

You can force many root crops (beets, parsnips, and carrots, for instance) to sprout new top growth by beheading them . Kids love the chopping part . Slice off the head end along with one to two inches of the root and place it in a carton pot . Add about an inch of water around the plant part . In a week or so new greens should appear from the top . Then snug the root into a container filled with potting soil .

This beheading technique also works well with pineapples . Cut off the top inch of the fruit and scoop out most of the yellow flesh inside the crown, leaving the core . Let the top dry for a day or two, then place it in a carton pot filled with pebbles for support and about an inch of water . Roots will appear and new shoots will sprout from the top in about two weeks, and soon you’ll have a fantastic tropical plant . To continue growing the new pineapple, transplant it into a pot, covering the crown and roots with soil .