How to Regrow Vegetables From Kitchen Scraps on Your Windowsill

Honestly, some of the most satisfying things I’ve ever grown in my kitchen cost me absolutely nothing — because they started as scraps I was about to toss in the compost. Green onions, lettuce, celery, fresh herbs. All of them will regrow right on your windowsill from the parts you’d normally throw away.

Green Onions: The Easiest Win

This is where I’d tell every single person to start. After you’ve used the green tops for dinner, just drop those little white root ends into a glass with an inch of water. That’s it. Within three to five days — I’m not exaggerating — you’ll see bright green tops pushing up like they’ve got somewhere to be. Set them on a sunny windowsill, swap out the water every few days so it stays fresh, and you can keep snipping the tops for weeks. I’ve had the same little cluster of root ends going for nearly a month before.

Lettuce and Leafy Greens

Cut about two inches off the base of a romaine head and set it cut-side up in a shallow bowl with just a half inch of water. Within a week, you’ll notice tender little leaves unfurling from the center — it’s genuinely kind of magical the first time you see it. The regrown leaves are smaller than what you bought, but they’re perfectly good in a salad or on a sandwich. Just remember to change the water every two days so it doesn’t get funky.

Celery

Same basic idea as the lettuce. Slice the base off your bunch of celery, set it cut-side up in a shallow bowl with a little water, and within a week you’ll have new pale stalks poking up from the middle. I actually tried this last winter when celery was nearly $4 a bunch at my grocery store, and after about two weeks I transferred the base into a pot of soil and kept it going on my kitchen counter for another month. My husband was skeptical until he watched me chop fresh celery from it for soup.

Herbs From Cuttings

This one surprised me when I first tried it. Those little bundles of fresh basil or mint you grab at the grocery store for $2? You can root them in a glass of water and turn them into actual plants. Snip a four-to-six inch stem just below a leaf node, strip off the lower leaves so they’re not sitting in the water, and just wait. Basil, mint, and cilantro all root pretty readily — usually within a week or two you’ll see little white roots forming. Once they’re about an inch long, pot them up in soil and you’ve basically got a free herb plant.

What Not to Bother With

I’ll save you some frustration here. Onion bulb bases, garlic cloves, and carrot tops will sprout leafy green growth, but that’s about as far as it goes — you won’t actually get new onions or carrots worth eating. If you want practical results, stick with green onions and herbs. Those two alone will give you more than enough to feel good about what you’re doing.

Final Thoughts

Grab your next bunch of green onions, use what you need for dinner, and stick those white root ends in a glass of water before you go to bed tonight. Three days from now they’ll already be growing, and something about watching food come back from what was basically trash never really gets old for me. It’s a small thing. But small things add up.