I've regrown green onions on and off for years. It's one of those things where you trim them down, stick the roots in water, and think oh right, I can just do this, and then life happens and you stop thinking about it.
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The last time my grocery store was out of organic green onions was the time that changed. I use them constantly, I wasn't about to drive twenty minutes to find them somewhere else, and I decided right then that this wasn't going to be an occasional thing anymore. It was going to be a permanent fixture in my kitchen. It has been ever since.
What I'm talking about is cut-and-come-again gardening, and if you've never heard that term it's exactly what it sounds like. Certain vegetables, when you cut them down, just keep growing back. You don't replant. You don't start over. You cut what you need, leave the root end in water, and it grows again. Green onions are probably the easiest and fastest example of this. Within a week of putting the root ends in water you've got usable green onions again, and you can harvest from the same plant repeatedly for four to six weeks before it starts to slow down or the base gets soft. At that point you either grab fresh ones from the store to start the cycle again or you've got a garden to pull from. Either way you've gotten a dozen or more uses out of something most people throw away.
The setup I use is a narrow glass vase set designed to fit on a windowsill, which matters more than it sounds when your windowsill is not exactly wide-open real estate. The roots hang down into the water while the stems stand up through the top, the water stays visible so I know when to change it, and it looks like something that belongs on a counter rather than a science experiment. I change the water out every few days and that's the entirety of the maintenance. I use reverse osmosis water but any clean water works. If you're growing larger plants or want to try this with celery or leeks, there's a set of three different sizes that gives you more options. The only thing worth paying attention to regardless of what you're growing is making sure the roots stay submerged and the water stays fresh so nothing gets funky at the base.
Green onions are what I use most because they're what I cook with most. But this same method works with celery, leeks, romaine lettuce hearts, and fennel fronds, among others. I've got celery going right now too, though I'll be honest with you, celery moves a lot slower than green onions. It gets there, it just doesn't have the same hustle. Each vegetable has its own pace, and green onions are the overachievers of the group.
This is not a gardening project. You don't need land. You don't need a raised bed or a grow light or a bag of soil. You need a sunny window, something to hold water, and the part of the vegetable you were about to throw away. That's it. If you're just getting started on any of this and you're not sure where to begin, this is as low a bar as it gets. And if you've got acres and have somehow not added this to your rotation yet, same answer. It takes about thirty seconds to set up and then it just sits there growing while you do other things.
The green onion I put in water last week is the green onion I'm putting in dinner tonight. I didn't go to the store. I didn't run out. I just walked to the window.
From The Field: No land, no experience, no excuse. If you've got a sunny window and a glass of water, you can grow something.
Ready to try it yourself?
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