Regrowing store produce for seed experiment

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MountainGuardian

MountainGuardian

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Apr 17, 2020
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I have heard a lot of concerns about seed availability since this Covid-19 situation and there are a lot of seed companies literally out of seed at this time. I was trying to think of some out of the box ways to come up with seed if need be...

I ran across a video of a gal in India that was resprouting onion plants from the bottom cutoffs from the onions she was using. She then stated that they would go to seed and she would use the seed to grow more onions.. Seemed a perfect place to start as I use a lot of onions and generally a 50 pound bag of them stored away...

resprouting 1.jpg


I have many times in past years planted carrot cutoffs and then collected the greens from them through the winter. In the spring have often moved them outdoors and allowed them to go to seed.

carrot cutoffs.jpg


I quite like leeks but they are a tad expensive around here so I haven't often bought them. I learned that leeks are a great cold tolerant crop so I decided to get into leeks here, I could grow all the leeks we could use (a lot) and I could have yet another cold tolerant plant to deal with our cold springs and short summers. I was thinking I would allow some of them to go to seed this year from the seed that I planted and then found that like other onion plants they won't seed until next year. Then I ran across a video of people cutting the leeks off above the base and eating the top portion and resprouting the left over piece and regrowing them into leeks... The light bulb went off... If this plant grew last year maybe it would go to seed this year without me having to wait a year to get my own seed... It looks very promising thus far...

Leek flower bud.jpg


This is a beet that I planted in December to collect greens from. I stopped collecting greens from it about 4 weeks back and am allowing to flower and go to seed now.


A Turnip flowering.jpg


Last but not least in this experiment I sprouted the last bit of a celery stalk that we ate most of and I planted that in the garden. I am hoping that I may be able to get some seed from that as well, we will see.

celery sprouted.jpg


I also planted some wheat from the bulk goods section at Winco and it seems to be doing well thus far. I also planted some lentils and beans inside from the bulk foods section as well and they are also doing great. The lentils are already flowering.
 
I have seen this idea shared online before, but I have never tried it.

MountainGuardian said:
I have heard a lot of concerns about seed availability since this Covid-19 situation and there are a lot of seed companies literally out of seed at this time.
Click to expand...
I am in agreement with you about seed shortages. I wanted a package of zucchini seeds and no one that I usually buy seeds from seemed to have them. I am placing orders and then picking up at the curb. I ordered zucchini seeds and one place said they didn't have any, but gave me a package of black squash, which also says zucchini on the package. Anyone who has ever grown zucchini knows you do not want to plant a whole package of seeds, unless you have a farm stand and are going to sell and give away a bushel of them a day. I will plant a couple, will give daughter a couple, and save a few for next year.

Onions: I know that onion starts can be difficult to find in years when people are not feeling concerned about food, like some of us are this year.

Potatoes: I rarely eat them now, but daughter is thin, loves and eats them. Because of her gluten allergy, I want to make sure we grow plenty of potatoes this year, for her food preps. Potatoes that grow sprouts that you have from the grocery store can be planted as well and will grow fine.

I have had some plants go to seed and then reseed in my garden. I missed a carrot one year and the next year go to seed. I had a little carrot patch going that self seeded for a while.

Garlic will reseed if it is not harvested, and I have a bunch of that growing wild in a part of my yard.

There are onions that will keep regrowing and my grandparents had a patch of them. That patch grew in their yards for years and when we wanted or needed onions we would go get what we wanted.

Some people think that everything has to be pulled out of a garden each fall and quickly processed by canning, dehydrating or freezing. Some things can be kept in the garden. I saw a video of an Amish farmer who covered his carrots with hay and went out to pick what they needed as they needed them.

Also, some people do not realize that some seeds will be viable for a few years. I have leeks seedlings growing from seeds that say 2017. I have some beefsteak tomato plants growing from seeds from 2015. I have arugula from 2016. Not everything is viable for a few years. I was surprised at the leeks, because they are related to onions and onion seeds seem to lose their viability soon. Sometimes I go to the gardening centers in the fall and buy seeds from the year for half price or less.
 
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MountainGuardian said:
I have heard a lot of concerns about seed availability since this Covid-19 situation and there are a lot of seed companies literally out of seed at this time. I was trying to think of some out of the box ways to come up with seed if need be...

I ran across a video of a gal in India that was resprouting onion plants from the bottom cutoffs from the onions she was using. She then stated that they would go to seed and she would use the seed to grow more onions.. Seemed a perfect place to start as I use a lot of onions and generally a 50 pound bag of them stored away...

View attachment 40684

I have many times in past years planted carrot cutoffs and then collected the greens from them through the winter. In the spring have often moved them outdoors and allowed them to go to seed.

View attachment 40685

I quite like leeks but they are a tad expensive around here so I haven't often bought them. I learned that leeks are a great cold tolerant crop so I decided to get into leeks here, I could grow all the leeks we could use (a lot) and I could have yet another cold tolerant plant to deal with our cold springs and short summers. I was thinking I would allow some of them to go to seed this year from the seed that I planted and then found that like other onion plants they won't seed until next year. Then I ran across a video of people cutting the leeks off above the base and eating the top portion and resprouting the left over piece and regrowing them into leeks... The light bulb went off... If this plant grew last year maybe it would go to seed this year without me having to wait a year to get my own seed... It looks very promising thus far...

View attachment 40686

This is a beet that I planted in December to collect greens from. I stopped collecting greens from it about 4 weeks back and am allowing to flower and go to seed now.


View attachment 40687

Last but not least in this experiment I sprouted the last bit of a celery stalk that we ate most of and I planted that in the garden. I am hoping that I may be able to get some seed from that as well, we will see.

View attachment 40688

I also planted some wheat from the bulk goods section at Winco and it seems to be doing well thus far. I also planted some lentils and beans inside from the bulk foods section as well and they are also doing great. The lentils are already flowering.
Click to expand...

Very good idea pineapples grow from store bought too, it takes several months but they do.We have soem sweet potatoes slips growing now to plants out from store.
 
Weedygarden said:
I have seen this idea shared online before, but I have never tried it.

I am in agreement with you about seed shortages. I wanted a package of zucchini seeds and no one that I usually buy seeds from seemed to have them. I am placing orders and then picking up at the curb. I ordered zucchini seeds and one place said they didn't have any, but gave me a package of black squash, which also says zucchini on the package. Anyone who has ever grown zucchini knows you do not want to plant a whole package of seeds, unless you have a farm stand and are going to sell and give away a bushel of them a day. I will plant a couple, will give daughter a couple, and save a few for next year.






Onions: I know that onion starts can be difficult to find in years when people are not feeling concerned about food, like some of us are this year.

Potatoes: I rarely eat them now, but daughter is thin, loves and eats them. Because of her gluten allergy, I want to make sure we grow plenty of potatoes this year, for her food preps. Potatoes that grow sprouts that you have from the grocery store can be planted as well and will grow fine.

I have had some plants go to seed and then reseed in my garden. I missed a carrot one year and the next year go to seed. I had a little carrot patch going that self seeded for a while.

Garlic will reseed if it is not harvested, and I have a bunch of that growing wild in a part of my yard.

There are onions that will keep regrowing and my grandparents had a patch of them. That patch grew in their yards for years and when we wanted or needed onions we would go get what we wanted.

Some people think that everything has to be pulled out of a garden each fall and quickly processed by canning, dehydrating or freezing. Some things can be kept in the garden. I saw a video of an Amish farmer who covered his carrots with hay and went out to pick what they needed as they needed them.

Also, some people do not realize that some seeds will be viable for a few years. I have leeks seedlings growing from seeds that say 2017. I have some beefsteak tomato plants growing from seeds from 2015. I have arugula from 2016. Not everything is viable for a few years. I was surprised at the leeks, because they are related to onions and onion seeds seed to lose their viability soon. Sometimes I go to the gardening centers in the fall and buy seeds from the year for half price or less.
Click to expand...




ee if you can find organic cukes then take out seeds, if any lesft over you can freeze them after they are dried out.We couldn't find orgnic sweet potatoes but so far the slips are growing nicely.

 
joel said:
I thought everyone stored 3 year of seeds for the garden in the freezer.
Click to expand...
There are people who plant gardens with no seeds. They buy everything as seedlings. I saw someone ask where they could get cucumber plants for their garden. I think those of us who have some seed packets collected might find them as invaluable as toilet paper in upcoming days.
 
I do tomato plants at a local country feed & seed to get a jump on tomatoes, cause my seedling are slow to grow.
Do they know most dry beans & peas for eating will grow in the field?
 
Cnsper said:
Onions you are supposed to be able start by just cutting off the roots and planting that.
Click to expand...

That is how I got the onion plants pictured above. The pencil onions were cut to about 2 inches and replanted and the yellow onions were the bottom 1/2 inch slice that had the root end replanted. So far neither have gone to seed but it is early yet.
 
joel said:
I do tomato plants at a local country feed & seed to get a jump on tomatoes, cause my seedling are slow to grow.
Do they know most dry beans & peas for eating will grow in the field?
Click to expand...

I have planted beans and lentils from grocery store bulk supplies. I also commonly plant black oil sunflower from 25 or 50 pound bags for animal feed. You can grow a small field of sunflower with one $20 bag of blackoil seed. I have also sprouted and grown feed corn from 50 pound bags of animal feed.

I currently have wheat growing in the bay window of the dining room that came from the Winco bulk isle.

The more of these ideas the better though, if things ever do get really bad having a good list of viable seed and plant alternatives could be helpful to some in the potentially not too distant future.
 
I did some potato plant experiments this winter and had already done some in the past. I often plant potatoes in December-January in the planter boxes in the house and let grow up. They make great big bushy plants but never really produce much for potatoes. They do take larger potatoes and turn them into smaller more planter sized potatoes. With 1- 4 inch potato you can grow 20 3/4 inch to 1 inch potatoes ready to go next spring for planting.

This winter I grew them to try "air layering" (marcotting) the stalks, I had no luck with this not one stalk produced any roots after 2 1/2 months. So I went to plan B and I trimmed out the massive amount of 3 foot tall stalks and cut them down carefully into dozens of stalks with a small amount of leaf at the ends of each and I have them sitting in water to see if I can sprout roots on them. Some of them appear to be producing roots nicely.

With this method one could plant a single full potato in Dec-Jan and turn it into 1 to 2 dozen small seed potatoes by spring. One could also produce a dozen or so stalks to cut and root into new plants by early spring.

I also did an experiment with the eye growth on potatoes from the pantry. I pulled out a potato and a couple 2 inch long growths were grown through the webbing in the bag and broke off of the potato. I looked at them and noticed the fine tiny white starts of roots around the base of the sprout and though just out of crazy curiosity, "is there enough there to get an actual potato plants start from by itself without the potato"? Sure enough I managed to root both of those broken off sprouts here in the house.

With the potential of planting one potato in winter and getting a dozen or two to plant from that, and the ability to air layer/marcott and the ability to when you harvest cut the stalks and root them one could turn a singular potato into a small crop of potatoes. That is one powerful useful plant....
 
I have a southern raspberry that is prostrate , like a dewberry & it runs up to 15 feet from the crown & the following Spring the tip roots & forms a new crown. Which is great when you have one plant,but after 15 plants, you have a snake jungle, so thick you can not reach most of the berries.
So the answer is to put the vines on a trellis, every Spring & remove old wood, like a grape vine.
 
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This year I got chickpeas, lentils, and peppers, to grow from seeds I collected from grocery-store purchases; potatoes and sweet potatoes grew from plants from the store. I tried growing plants from scraps of onions, garlic, and lettuce, but only the lettuce grew and it produced tiny leaves before quickly going to seed.
 
Erin said:
This year I got chickpeas, lentils, and peppers, to grow from seeds I collected from grocery-store purchases; potatoes and sweet potatoes grew from plants from the store. I tried growing plants from scraps of onions, garlic, and lettuce, but only the lettuce grew and it produced tiny leaves before quickly going to seed.
Click to expand...

We have grown lemon trees, pineapples, onions all produced.But then some of those were planted about 10 yr ago not sure about todays seeds. He has a tangelo he wants to plant from some we bought this week. Some if not heiloom or if they are hybrids won't grow or if they do grow won't produce. This lemon tree has never even bloomed much less produced.
 
I've grown alot of stuff from the store. Surprisingly most of it grows, somethings don't...or atleast not for me. This year I tried pinto beans and not only did they grow, they produced alot. Also this year, I have some avocado and lemons growing inside the house. Outside I have some spinach and bok choy growing although very slowly and probably because of the cooler/cold weather. And for the second year in a row, I have some onion bulbs in a pot, just to keep us in green onions over the winter. Next spring I'll put them in the ground so grow out the bulb.

Things that you grow, whether from seed or from store bought produce......like lettuces, spinach, and even onions, is to leave the root end in the soil and only cut off what you need of it. As long as you leave one or two leafs or greens, it will resprout and grow more. Doing that also saves seeds from your supply for another year, or additional plantiings.

Saving seeds, whether from store bought produce or your own supply, it's always best to save from atleast 2 or 3 of your best plants for genetic diversity. And one of the worst problems using store bought produce to grow from, is the potential of bringing in any plant diseases to contaminate your soil.....especially things like potatoes that carry a blight (black spots in or on the flesh or rotting from the inside out). I think my main garden has this problem, though it could be something else again, or even a combination of factors......that even though I did have a pretty good few years of growing & producing......I have also been noticing some odd things happening. I probably should get the soil tested to be sure, but there's a row or two out there that won't produce much of anything, no matter what I try seeding it with and/or weird growth habits, or, or, or.......so this next season, I'm not planting anything in that area, just to let it rest. I have and am trying to prepare other areas to grow in, that haven't been worked as much.
 
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