Yeah but no. Some foods are very easy to grow, but most aren’t. Probably the easiest of all is scallions. After eating a scallion keep 1 inch of the base intact, then put it in any container with some water in it, wait a week and you’ll have a full brand new scallion. Repeat forever for infinite scallions.
https://www.apieceofrainbow.com/regrow-green-onions-scallions/
Ehhhhh more like a month or more. Maybe if you planted it in some soil, or added a lot more nutrients to the water, but to me its more trouble than its worth.
You get a few little runts after tending to it for like a month.
It is useful if you dont use scallions often, since you will always have fresh ones on hand
No, I’ve done this myself a zillion times. And if you look at my link or do a web search you’ll see all sources say this same thing. If you tried it before and didn’t have the same results then that’s atypical. Maybe something was wrong with the scallions you used, or some other problem
Could depend on what’s in the local tap water (mineral content as well as pH), in addition to lighting as weeeeum mentioned. I have some scallions on my planted aquarium (no fish, but I lightly fertilize for the plants) with a grow light, and I can harvest one of the four plants once a week. So even with active grow light and fertilizer, the once a month per plant statement seems right. Also note I started with seven plants, all from the same store-bought bunch, but three of them died over the first couple of months.
I don’t think they get enough sun. Other than that they were in a cup at the kitchen window, with the water replaced every couple days.
Other than that they were in a cup at the kitchen window
Definitely not enough sun. They really want cooler temps but 6-7 hours of full sun per day. Windows are terrible for plants because the sun, annoyingly, moves.
Infinite scallion glitch
You should grow some mint
Wait what? Are you literally saying that garlic is hard to grow? WHAAAT?
I have no idea how easy it has garlic is to grow, i just used scallion as an example of a very easy one
Ah, I wasn’t sure how to interpret “Yeah but no”.
I find garlic easier than scallions and yeah, scallions are quite easy.
How do you do garlic?
You mean grow? As in what do I personally do?
I plant it usually between Nov 1 and Dec 15 (I’m in zone 8a). Most people say 1-2 weeks after the first hard frost and for me that would be around Oct 15 - I usually go later only because I’m busy since our markets run until the end of Oct.
Just break up a bulb and plant each clove pointy end up about 1" deep and 4-6" apart in any direction in moderately fertile soil with good tilth (ie good drainage - not too heavy clay, ideally). I don’t grow this for market any more (weirdly, it was never high demand) and just put it in a raised bed. I leave the soil bare in winter to absorb heat and in my climate don’t worry about frost protection but if you are in a colder climate you should plant deeper - even 3-4" deep in zone 3 and maybe even mulch. But it’s very frost hardy.
I’ll typically weed a couple times before mulching. Once temps start to rise in spring I’ll cut fresh grass with a hand scythe and use that as mulch to reduce moisture loss and keep soil temps as cool as possible. Obviously this also helps keep weeds down - garlic doesn’t like competition. If you are growing hard-neck varieties, which you absolutely should, then cut the scapes before they get tough. Garlic scape pesto is the bomb - I make a huge batch and freeze it.
I’ll stop watering once I start to see bottom leaves browning (as temps rise the plants stop growing) and usually harvest once about 2/3 of the plant is brown - typically July for me. This varies a lot by conditions and variety - digging one up to see is a good idea. You can eat them “green” no problem.
I don’t like to cure in the soil and prefer to harvest and let them cure on a drying rack in a shaded but breezy place. Properly cured and stored even hard neck varieties typically last 8-9 months for me. I like to dehydrate some for garlic powder and will freeze in oil so I can make it to the next harvest.
I do occasionally buy new garlic to get additional varieties - Peaceful Valley in California is good and will have sales around mid-November, as is Maine Potato Lady which is cheaper and better quality but sells out fast. I have a lot of favorites but probably Georgian Fire is at the top of the list. Spanish Roja for salsa… Purple Glazer for roasting, Music for every day use.
You can certainly plant garlic you buy from a store and it’s way cheaper but it will almost always be softneck and usually “California Late White”, which I find very meh. You also run some risk of picking up something like white rot (Sclerotium Cepivorum) which can persist in your soil. But the good news is that even though seed garlic is expensive it can be a one-time purchase since you just replant every year.
This was exactly what I was thinking of.
Comes outta fucking ground.
INFINITE FOOD GLITCH UNPATCHED 2024 ((NOT CLICKBAIT))
It is my understanding that trying to raise garlic from grocery store bought cloves are prone to die of disease. Somehow. Half remembering something I read while considering trying to grow garlic in my garden.
Store bought everything is often not really good for home growing.
Trees in industrial agriculture are often spliced (don’t know the proper English word) so that the root is a different variety that’s stronger than the branch variety that produces the actual e.g. apples. If you plant the seeds, you’ll get a weak root.
Also, often enough the varieties you can buy are not really suited for the local climate. Peaches do grow where I live, but store bought peaches won’t survive the emotional coldness of a northern German winter.
Grafted apple trees are often a flavorful top connected to a weak root. Weak root = smaller trees that can be planted closer together and are easier to pick. If you plant apple seeds, you will probably get a ginormous tree with fruit only useful for cider making (a la Johnny Appleseed’s business model) because they don’t taste good either fresh or in baked goods.
I was lucky to get what I assume is a mutant avocado seed. I tried to grow six different seeds, germinated four, and only succeeded in actually planting one. Two didn’t germinate, and the other three grew roots but the seedling was malformed and wouldn’t grow out of the seed.
The one that survived must have had a mutation that allowed it to survive despite what was otherwise probably an intentional effort to produce sterile seeds.
Usually I hear “grafted,” where you take one variety with strong roots, cut the top off of him, take another variety that makes the fruit you want, cut the roots off of him, and then put the good roots on the good fruit and tape them together. I’ve even seen one root stock grafted to several different species of fruit so the same tree grew apples, pears and pomegranates.
Apples don’t breed true; a seeds out of a Gala apple won’t grow a tree that makes Gala apples. They might be better, they might be worse, they won’t be Galas. All commercial apple production is done by grafting branches of existing trees onto new root stocks.
I am just north of where peaches will properly grow. Doesn’t stop people from trying. Every year in early spring there’s a late cold snap, and every year people say “It’s killin’ my peaches.” Every single individually wrapped year I hear that from someone.
I mean, peaches do grow pretty far up north, my grandpa had a peach tree in northern Germany and it often had enough peaches to almost kill itself due to their weight.
But those peaches were pretty small, not very sweet and had pretty thick skin. Not ideal, but serviceable.
It’s a quirk of our climate here that it’ll start getting comfortably warm even in late February into March, and then around late March or early April there will be 36 hours of frost, enough to kill all the blossoms that opened during that false spring. So you get pretty leafy trees that bear no fruit.
I get you peaches, I also just barely survive the emotional coldness of a northern German winter.
It is my understanding that trying to raise garlic from grocery store bought cloves are prone to die of disease.
Nah, you’re probably fine. But you will likely be limited to the Least Delightful Variety of garlic, also known as California Late White, a softneck variety chosen for it’s durability, shelf life, and ease of growing.
There are so many other really awesome varieties out there. And garlic is so easy to grow.
counterargument, it’s trivial to grow
Garlic is stupid easy to grow. It doesn’t require much space or particularly high fertility and watering is easy to manage since the roots are relatively deep and it benefits from mulch. The best part is you can get MANY really cool varieties, whereas it’s pretty much only one softneck variety in the store.
The main points are to plant early enough so it gets enough cool days (40 days below 40F is the rule of thumb but that’s probably too conservative), to weed enough to reduce competition, and to water appropriately.
Does it have to get that cold overnight, or during the day? Cause that means I can’t plant the stuff in IB, and I want more varieties of garlic.
Does it have to get that cold overnight, or during the day?
The way I interpret it is if you have around 40 days with temperatures of 40F or below you are good. I’ve also heard up to 50F is ok. And really that’s only in the first couple of months so they can bulb up. Also, they will stop growing once soil temps at around 1" reach about 80-90F depending on variety. I mulch with cut grass to keep the soil cooler.
I have certainly read people being very particular about it and even recommending refrigerating the bulbs before planting, but I’ve never worried about it too much and have always had good results, even planting quite late for my area. As is often the case advise is either very generalized or very specific to a variety and set of conditions. Give it a shot!
Does garlic grow cloves easily? I know onion doesn’t bulb very easily, preferring bolting, and only once every two years, but I don’t know about garlic
Very easily. We’ve done garlic two years in a row and its pretty damn easy. You just have to plant it the late fall, mulch for winter, and then harvest late summer.
Oh! And if you get scapes, cut them all off! They’ll pull resources from the bulb, plus they taste good.
Check a local farmers market for garlic bulbs to buy and plant.
