Regrow Your Food! - Green Onions - Jireh Provisions Homestead

Hey everybody!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Mainly because I really haven’t had much to talk about as it relates to homesteading or our journey – or so I thought!

Since this government shutdown, I’ve been posting a lot encouraging people to learn to grow their own foods on my social media platforms. I’ve talked about it here too in blog posts like: “Food Recalls and What You Can Do About It” and “If You Have A Seed“. When Antoine posted about regrowing lettuce, I thought, “Why haven’t I posted a blog about regrowing food??” So, I’ll start doing some posts to help those that may need it.

Now keep in mind, I am Mrs BROWN-Thumb – to. the. max. So, if I can do this, you can do this. So let’s explore today how to regrow green onions.

First off, why start with green onions? Because out of all the things I have tried to regrow these were by far the easiest and fastest to regrow and use. Just to prove my point, I took some pictures of going from chopping off the green part and showing you just how fast it has regrown with only water in 2 days.

green onion plant — Organic whole green onions with roots. The root on some plants will be short. Don't worry, they will grow.

Green onion root cutting — Cut and use the green part of the plant in various dishes. Save the white bulb to regrow.

green onion root in water — Place the root in fresh water every 1 -2 days

Green onion growth day 1 — New green onion will grow from the center. This is not even a full 24 hours from the first cutting.

Green onion growth day 2 — This is day two. Already the green onion is above the rim of the glass. By the end of the week, there may be enough to use again.

So, what do you do?

I highly suggest you start with buying organic green onions, as shown above in picture one, from the store. Yes, they may be a little more expensive by a few cents compared to the conventional – but this is an investment. Remember, these are bulb/root plants. Anything that’s in the ground it’s going to suck up into the plant, and I’d imagine you’d want to start off with a good and healthy plant for your family.

Next, decide how you’d like to keep them alive. Fresh water daily or every other day works just fine. That’s how I keep mine. If you choose to do that, just keep enough water in there to cover the roots. You don’t want it much higher because you’ll make the bulb (which can also be used) mushy. If you choose to use the bulb, keep in mind, that it won’t regrow.

You can also keep them in potted soil. If you are on a budget, a good vegetable soil works fine. If you can afford a little more, I’d suggest a soil that is not only organic but also has good healthy fertilizer etc. You can put quite a few green onions in there since they are small. The bulbs won’t grow as big, but if your goal is to continuously use the green onion, that won’t matter much. We’ve potted quite a few and left them outside to their own devices – clipping when we needed them. The green onion part grew nice and big. We were even able to bring them to seed that way.

Last, keep clipping. Green onions are great because they smell and taste just like onions and you can use them in a lot of dishes. As long as you change out the water or keep it watered in soil, you’ll have green onions for a very long time.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to regrow ginger!