- 18 hours ago
A jar of water on a sunny windowsill can turn kitchen scraps into fresh food, and this guide shows how nine plants grow in water with no soil needed. From green onions and celery to lettuce, herbs, tomato cuttings, leek, and garlic, the video explains which scraps can regrow, which ones need transplanting later, and how to keep them alive long enough to harvest.
The narration leans into old-fashioned home gardening wisdom, starting with the idea that many “waste” pieces are really a second crop waiting to happen. You get practical water-growing tips for a kitchen windowsill setup, including how much water to use, when to change it, and why roots and stems should stay submerged while leaves stay dry. It also covers the difference between quick regrowth crops like green onions and short-lived scraps like celery or lettuce, plus longer-term cuttings such as mint, basil, rosemary, and tomato suckers.
If you enjoy gardening tips, indoor growing, hydroponic-style regrowing, or frugal homestead advice, this is packed with simple ideas you can try at home. It is especially useful for anyone looking for easy kitchen gardening, food-saving tricks, and beginner-friendly ways to regrow vegetables and herbs from store-bought leftovers.
SEO: Ideal for searches like grow plants in water, plants that grow in water, no soil gardening, regrow vegetables from scraps, indoor herb growing, kitchen windowsill gardening, and easy gardening tips. A strong fit for home gardening, self-sufficiency, and practical food-saving ideas.
The narration leans into old-fashioned home gardening wisdom, starting with the idea that many “waste” pieces are really a second crop waiting to happen. You get practical water-growing tips for a kitchen windowsill setup, including how much water to use, when to change it, and why roots and stems should stay submerged while leaves stay dry. It also covers the difference between quick regrowth crops like green onions and short-lived scraps like celery or lettuce, plus longer-term cuttings such as mint, basil, rosemary, and tomato suckers.
If you enjoy gardening tips, indoor growing, hydroponic-style regrowing, or frugal homestead advice, this is packed with simple ideas you can try at home. It is especially useful for anyone looking for easy kitchen gardening, food-saving tricks, and beginner-friendly ways to regrow vegetables and herbs from store-bought leftovers.
SEO: Ideal for searches like grow plants in water, plants that grow in water, no soil gardening, regrow vegetables from scraps, indoor herb growing, kitchen windowsill gardening, and easy gardening tips. A strong fit for home gardening, self-sufficiency, and practical food-saving ideas.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00My neighbor stopped me at the fence last spring and asked how it was that my wife never seemed
00:05to buy green onions, nor basil, nor half the things his wife brought home from the store
00:10every week. He thought we had some secret patch out behind the barn. We do not. The whole of it
00:17sits on the ledge above our kitchen sink in a row of old glass jars, and it costs us nothing
00:24at all.
00:24By the end of this, you will have one of those jars going yourself, because here is the plain truth
00:31that near breaks my heart to say. Go and look in your scrap bin tonight at what you threw out
00:39this
00:39week. The white root ends off the green onions, the stump of a head of lettuce, the woody heel of
00:47a
00:47bunch of celery. A good part of what you scraped into that bin was not waste at all. It was
00:54a
00:54whole second crop, alive and willing, and all it ever wanted from you was a jar of water and a
01:02sunny
01:02sill. My grandmother would have been sick to see the things we throw out. In her kitchen, nothing
01:09with life left in it went to the hogs before it had given everything it had. She kept a row
01:16of jars on
01:16the window ledge above the sink, plain glass jars, and in them were the bottoms and the stems and the
01:23cuttings of this and that, all of them pushing out white roots and fresh green growth over the
01:30dishwater steam. It was not a hobby. It was not decoration. It was food, free food, coaxed out of
01:39the parts the rest of the world throws away. Today I am going to show you exactly how she did
01:45it,
01:45and by the end you will never look at that scrap bin the same way again. I gathered the whole
01:52of it
01:53into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want it, it is there. I
02:00will not
02:01mention it again. So here is the whole secret, and it is no secret at all, only a thing forgotten.
02:09A great many plants do not need soil to live. They need water and light and a little air at
02:17the roots.
02:18The soil is only the thing that holds the water and feeds it. Take a living stem or a living
02:25root
02:25and set it in a jar of clean water in the light, and it will do the very thing it
02:30was made to do.
02:32It will put out roots and reach for the sun. Some of these will root in a jar and then
02:38go on to your
02:39garden or a pot. Others will feed you for weeks right there on the windowsill from nothing but water,
02:47and every one of them you were about to throw away. Let me start with the one that will shock
02:54you
02:54fastest, for I want you hooked before I lose you. Green onions. Scallions, some call them.
03:02When you cut your green onions for the pan, you cut off the white root end, that little inch with
03:08the stringy whiskers on the bottom, and you pitch it. Stop pitching it. Set it root down in a shallow
03:16glass
03:16with just enough water to cover the roots and put it on the sill. By the next morning, I am
03:23not
03:23exaggerating, the very next morning, you will see new green pushing up out of the middle. In a few days,
03:31you will have a whole new green top to snip for your eggs. Cut what you need, leave the white
03:39base in the
03:39water, and it will grow you another and another for weeks. Change the water every day or two so it
03:47stays
03:47sweet. One bunch of onions from the store becomes a month of onions on your sill. That is the one
03:55to
03:55start a child on, for nothing in all of growing happens so fast. Next, celery, which works the very
04:04same way, only slower and statelier. When you have cut the stalks off a bunch of celery for your soup,
04:12you are left with that pale, flat base, the heel of it, which everyone throws out. Set that heel,
04:20cut side up, in a shallow dish of water on the sill. Within days, you will see tiny new leaves
04:27pushing
04:27up out of the dead-looking center, pale yellow at first, then green. It will not give you back,
04:34a whole fat bunch, mind. I will be straight with you. The base has only so much strength stored in
04:41it. But it will give you weeks of fresh celery leaves and little tender inner stalks, fine for
04:49flavoring a pot of soup or a stew. And that is a gift from a thing bound for the bin.
04:55Then lettuce,
04:56the same trick again, and the tall romaine sort does it best of all the lettuces. The next time you
05:02buy a
05:03head of it, do not cut clear to the bottom when you use it up. Leave a good 2 or
05:083 inches of the base
05:09whole, with the little pale core intact in the middle. For that core is where the new growth rises
05:16from. Set that base in a dish with an inch of water, on the sill, and in a week new
05:23leaves rise up out of
05:25the heart of it. It will not swell to a full head again, it will be smaller and looser than
05:30the first.
05:31But it is real lettuce, free lettuce, salad grown out of a stump you were about to compost. Change the
05:39water every day or two on this one, for lettuce fouls its water quick. Now hear the principle under
05:46all three of those, for it matters. Those are not truly growing new, they are living on the strength
05:53already stored in the base, the way a man lives off what is in his cellar through the winter.
05:59They give generously for a few weeks, and then the stored strength runs out, and they are spent.
06:06That is not a failure, that is the nature of it. You took one more good eating out of a
06:12thing headed
06:12for the bin, and when it is finished, then it goes to the compost, having given twice. A thrifty soul
06:20asks no more of it than that. Now the herbs, and the herbs are different, for these will truly root
06:27and grow into whole new plants that can live for a long while or go out to your garden. And
06:34here is a
06:35thing worth knowing before you spend a penny. The herbs from the grocer's shelf, the bundled living
06:41stems, not the dried, will root for you just the same as a cutting from a garden, so you need
06:48not buy a single
06:49plant to begin. Mint first, for mint roots in water the way water runs downhill, which is to say with
06:57no effort
06:58at all, and whether you wish it or not. Take a sprig of mint, even a sprig from the grocery
07:04bundle, strip the leaves off the
07:06bottom inch, and stand it in a glass of water. Inside a week you will see white roots threading down.
07:14Once it has a good head of roots, you may pot it up, or leave it right there in the
07:19glass and pinch leaves for your tea
07:22all the while. Keep the water fresh, for mint drinks fast and fowls fast. A bundle of mint from the
07:30market, that you would have used once and lost to the back of the cold box, becomes a living plant
07:36that
07:36feeds you for months. Basil roots the same way, and just as easy, only basil loves warmth and hates a
07:45cold sill, so keep it in a warm, bright window or it will sulk and blacken.
07:51Take a stem, strip the lower leaves, stand it in water, and in a week or so it roots. Change
07:58basil's water often, every two or three days, for of all the herbs, basil turns its water murky the fastest.
08:06A single stem, rooted this way, becomes a whole basil plant for the price of nothing. And rosemary, which I
08:15give you last of the herbs because it tests your patience.
08:19Rosemary will root in water, but slow, three weeks to six, and it wants a soft green cutting from the
08:26tip, not an old woody stem, and plenty of warmth and light.
08:31Many a cutting will sit and do nothing, or rot on you. But the one that takes is a true
08:38gift, a whole rosemary bush begun from a free sprig. And rosemary, once rooted, lives for years. Patience is the
08:48whole of it.
08:49Now I will give you one trick that is pure gardener's gold, for those of you who grow tomatoes.
08:56When you tend your tomato plants in summer, you pinch out the suckers, those little shoots that spring up in
09:02the crook between the main stem and a branch.
09:05Everyone throws them down in the row. Do not. Stand that sucker in a jar of water on the sill,
09:12and in a week or two it roots, and you have a whole new tomato plant, free, identical to the
09:19one it came from, ready to set out in the garden.
09:23A man who grows the tall, rambling kinds of tomato, the ones that keep climbing and sprawling all season, pinches
09:31suckers by the dozen, and can raise a whole second planting from them for nothing, right through the summer.
09:37Mind, a sucker roots, best taken while it is young and green, a few inches long, before it turns woody.
09:45Stand it deep in the jar, keep it warm and bright, and once its roots run two or three inches,
09:51you pot it up and treat it as any young tomato.
09:54That is the thrift of it exactly. The plant hands you free children all summer, and most folk tread them
10:01into the dirt without a thought.
10:03And here are two more off the scrap board that cost you nothing. The leek, that great fat cousin of
10:10the onion, regrows from its root end the very same way the green onion does.
10:15When you trim a leek, keep the white rooted base, stand it in water, and it pushes up fresh green
10:22you can cut for the pot. Bigger than an onion, so give it a bigger glass, but the trick is
10:27the same.
10:28And the garlic clove. You have all seen a clove of garlic sprout a little green shoot in the bowl
10:34when it has sat too long, and most folk cut that green out and curse it. Do not!
10:40Stand that sprouting clove, or two or three of them, in a shallow dish with a bare bit of water
10:47touching the bottoms, and they throw up tender green garlic shoots, mild and fine, snipped onto your eggs or your
10:54potatoes like a chive.
10:56One old clove gone soft in the bowl that you would have thrown out becomes a little crop of garlic
11:03greens on the sill.
11:04Nothing with life in it is waste. That is the whole lesson, said again.
11:09A few plain rules for all of this, so you do not go wrong. Keep only the roots and the
11:15bare stem under the water, never the leaves, for a leaf under water rots and fouls the whole jar.
11:23Change the water when it starts to cloud, which keeps it fresh and full of the air the roots must
11:29breathe, for roots drown in dead still water, same as they drink from fresh.
11:35Keep your jars in a bright window, but out of the hard noon sun beating through the glass, for that
11:41heats the water and breeds green slime.
11:43And if you mean to keep a cutting growing in water a long while rather than potting it up, give
11:49it a single drop of weak plant food now and again, for plain water has no feeding in it, and
11:55the plant will slowly starve without it.
11:58That is the whole of the method. My grandmother had a saying as she worked those jars on her sill.
12:04She said a thrifty kitchen throws away nothing that still wants to live.
12:09I was a boy, and I thought she was only being sparing, the way the old people were sparing with
12:15everything. I know better now.
12:17She was not merely saving a few pennies. She was keeping faith with the food itself, taking all it had
12:24to give before she let it go.
12:26And that is a different and a deeper thing than thrift. It is a kind of respect.
12:31So let me say plainly who gains by you not knowing this.
12:35The grocer gains, who sells you a fresh bundle of green onions and a fresh clamshell of basil every single
12:42week,
12:43when one of each could have fed you for a month on the sill.
12:46It is not that anyone schemed it so. It is only that a thing you buy again every week gets
12:52remembered,
12:53and a thing you grow for free from your own scraps gets forgotten.
12:57No one coordinated it. It just rolled on by itself, kitchen upon kitchen, until folk forgot that the bin was
13:06ever anything but a bin.
13:08Now tell me this in the comments.
13:09What do you throw away from your kitchen the most? The onion ends? The lettuce stumps? The celery heels?
13:16Pick one and set it in water this very night, and come back and tell me what it did.
13:22And tell me as well how many are in your household. For a windowsill that feeds one is a small
13:28thing.
13:29But a windowsill that stretches the grocery money of a family of eight is a real thing indeed.
13:35Next time I will show you how to build the cold frame against the wall, so that even in the
13:40deep of winter your free green things have a warm place to carry on.
13:45But for now, go and look again at that scrap bin and see it for what it truly is, half
13:51of it at least, a second garden you were throwing away.
13:54The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.
14:01This isative…
14:01Dutch…
14:01mo…
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