It’s an easy, fun kitchen science project that feeds your kids' brains AND tummies! Besides being a great way to minimize kitchen waste and stretch your grocery dollars a little further, you can have fresh, flavorful herbs at your fingertips even during winter! Keep reading to learn how to propagate green onions and lemongrass from store-bought stalks…
Have you ever bought a bunch of green onions, used half for a recipe, then forgotten about the rest only to discover their rotted remains in the produce drawer two weeks later? Now, instead of letting them go to waste, you can make more green onions from the ones you didn’t use up. Here’s how:
1. Begin by cutting the green stalks from the onions, leaving about a 2 to 3-inch base (the white bulb + roots).
2. Place the base upright in a glass with water (the roots should be submerged in the water with the tops peeking out above the water).
3. In about a week, new green stalks will be ready to harvest.
4. Looking for a recipe that uses green onions? Try our new recipe tool!
A staple of Thai and Vietnamese cooking, lemongrass is great to have on hand. It adds a delicious citrusy flavor to soups, sauces, and smoothies and is also a terrific flavor-booster for rice – just add it to your water before cooking! Lemongrass is also an excellent herb to use in this experiment because it’s extremely fast-growing. Here’s what you do:
1. Start with a whole stalk of fresh lemongrass with the bulb intact. You can typically find fresh lemongrass at Asian grocery stores or larger supermarkets.
2. Carefully remove any dead foliage.
3. Cut the stalks 5 to 6 inches from the base (saving the rest for cooking, of course!).
4. Place it in a tall glass with 2 to 3 inches of water and set it in a warm, sunny location.
5. Within just a couple of days, nubby, little roots will begin to form at the base and new lemongrass shoots will begin to grow from the center of the plant.
6. What will you make with your new lemongrass? How about this delicious Tom Kha – Thai Coconut Lemongrass Soup?
Eventually, both these plants will need nutrients to remain alive. Typically, plants get nutrients from the soil they’re planted in. So, if you feel like it, and if the season and conditions are right, you can level up this experiment by transplanting each of your rooted herbs into a pot with loose soil and see what happens!
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