Hmmmmmmmm.........Growing Thigs?...should be 'things'.

I've been told that dried beans will sprout just fine and that you can grow them into full sized, producing plants. I've not tried them myself.

I've done sweet potatoes, yams, russet potatoes and other rooted veggies, onions- particularly a red that I couldn't find a name for at the store, but really enjoyed. I'll be doing that again this year because it's hard to find a good, spicy red onion. Most of them are rather sweet. And I like the spicy ones to use in chili and potato salad. I'm gonna cut the one I have into quarters, making sure that each quarter has part of the root core, and plant them in a 10 gl bucket. Gonna put that on wheels that way if I wanna bring it inside for the weather or to put it under my lights, it's easier on me.

I've done bell peppers and chilis this way too. Most things that I've bought that are listed as organic and not processed (baked,blanched salted, etc) can be grown from the pantry :)

Kathy

I've gotten celery seed to germinate,pomegranites,strawberries,blueberries,grapes and many other things.Of course I've GOTTA try them,after all-it is MORE seeds!LOL

Had a lot of luck with store-bought tomatillos and garlic last year. Now if only I could grow bread and chocolate the same way!

I grew Garlic and some onions I garbage picked. I planted some melon seeds, but the bunnies ate the plants up.

I did plant the flax seeds, and they grew, but it was late in the year and they didnt have time to bloom. DH is a health food nut and gave me a bag of flax seeds to plant, I was going to make the same post the other day. He gave me enough to grow a flax farm. I wonder how many seeds each plant makes? Is it enough to justify the effort and get enough seeds for him to grind int his kefir. (grosses me out tho).

I had a post at one time asking about specific beans and quite a few ppl said to use the dried beans in the bags @ the grocery store.. I was looking for butter beans specifically.. so I went and bought those AND one of those bags for the '15-bean soup' cuz it had lots of diff types (they're all listed on the back) and I plan to sow at least 3-4 of each variety this year.. just think if I get even one plant from sowing.. I'll have 15 plants for the price of $1.29 !! And then saving seeds from them to share/trade.. priceless! :P

~Wendy

LOL I have grown some greenish brown stuff in the fridge that came from the things bought at the grocery store. GROSS !!! hahaha but it might come in handy with this @^&*&*$@!!!! cold that I have. sigh :(
jan

watermelons, tomato's, the tops of pineapple just for kicks and grins, ohhh now, my biggest excitement is.....ok, don't laugh to hard, but i've wanted the vidalia onion for like ever!! so i' decided to try and see if i stuck a dried up onion on dirt that i have stuff planted on what it'd do, Hee hee, its grown roots!! so i'm letting that baby grow taller and see if it'll bloom, if it will, then when i get a vidalia onion, then i'm gona do that with it, and possibly just some of the roots also, because i have done that with the roots of some garlic and they have sprouted also. i just throw things that still have dried up roots on them into the "whatever try it" garden and then toss some dirt on it, and keep it moist and usually the dang things sprout something. did the same thing with those huge strawberries from sam's club, but i forgot where i planted them. so they probably got mowed down :'( nothing is offlimits!! **huge smile** ~Medo

Here is a link that might be useful: barehanded totally nutso gardener

I have some chestnuts in the fridge stratifying. We'll see on that. I tried some raw nuts from trader joes but didn't have any luck. Dragon fruit seeds germinate real easy I finally got some cactus looking parts coming out of them. This is my favorite topic of all time!

LOL! I have a bad habit of trying to grow things from nothing...usually I get nothing. It started long ago when I was a kid and planted a sprouted tater into a hanging pot and hung it in my bedroom which was in a very hot attic. It took off feet high in no time. Never any luck with berries, or grapes. Garlic and horseradish are very easy and fun. Corriander seed never worked for me.

I once threw out the pack of seeds that come with a Corned Beef. It said on the Corned Beef pack that the seeds were not needed for flavor so I didn't use them. They all came up but since I had no idea what they were there really was no reason to harvest.
I also start apple trees and pomegranates from seed. I think that is all. Well I have tried ginger but I did not get it to grow.

Oh yeah we have grown a few things from store bought things...a couple pineapple tops, celery from the butt end, onion from the cut off end, tangerines from seed, trying to grow a pineapple seed (so far no luck), garlic, herbs...hmmm, probably more but cannot think of what right now. Kim

I just bought bird seed(for wild birds) OUCH$$ So I'm looking at in the checkout line and thought "why am I not growing this?!?" Sooo that's what I'm wintersowing next!
I think it's just millet and some other little grass seeds.
-B

We grew a Mango the year before last! Talk about BIG seeds...lol...poor thing died,dont know why,but my son is making me try another...lol...Pineapple tops,potatoes,onions,apples,oranges... I am going to try some of the dried bean types I have,I use them for crafts mainly,but I really want to see what comes out of them! :)

This is a great topic Sue,glad I saved it for when I had time to read the whole thing...love the idea of growing chocolate! :)

Medo, I still have the mango tree you sent me, we call it Medo's Mango! It is now over a foot tall!
I threw some carrots in my worm composter and now have little carrots plants growing in there!

I have heard you can grow brown rice too.

I save the seeds from a Caribbean Red Papaya, dried them and planted them. Several sprouted and I had both male and female plants that produced huge fruit!

Our local Asian Market is the best place to find interesting things to grow! I regularly get Taro (Elephant Ears) from there and have had red, black, and purple stemmed ears way before PDN did! LOL! We have also planted their Giant Taro. At $3 a pound, that's a lot of bulbs! LOL! We've also planted ginger and yucca from there, and assorted herbs.

Shelly

I was the guy that started the original thread. I am glad so many folks thought the topic was as intesting as I.

I am thinking about growing Dragon Fruit next!

This is one of my favorite silly things to do. This year i grew tumeric and posted about it. I started a nice patch of German camomile that way so its not all that silly. Garlic , horseradish, mint ,watercress, mustard seed,lemon grass. and Szechuan peppercorn all worked well also.Ginger , papaya, mango, avocado, lychee,and many other tropicals were not practical in zone 5. This year I also planted roots like beet, parsley,carrot,also kohlrabi to get the seed for next year. I got a ton of beet seed from one beet but the parsnip attracted a large stem boring webby multicolored worm i have never seen before. No seed from that or the carrots.Oh popcorn works if you get it from a farmstore so its not a hybrid. Hot peppers work well too. I will be thinking of this for days now coming up with all the other things I forgot. Ric

What a fun topic.I will try many of the suggestions here.I have tried collecting fern spores from flower arrangments,I did not keep track of the instructions,but I remember you use the ones with bumps on the underside of the fronds.Put it bumps down on a sheet of paper and slide into a manilla envelope.It will eventually dry and drop the spores ,small as dust,
I do not recall the rest, but I would think if you sprinkle them on moist starter mix they would sprout.
I remember now,I lost them in a move,I will have to try this again now that I'm planted.

I have a few sugar plum tomatos from trader joes starting to pop up outside and a couple of the tomatos on the vine popping up outside in a pot i threw some rotting tomatos in.

We received a basket of dried fruit last winter. At the time I had avacado seeds sprouting (which didn't survive), so I got the idea to try growing the date seeds. It's a year later and despite having broken their tap root (I guess that's what it was), they are small but starting to grow quickly now. I'm patiently waiting for them to develop pinnate leaves. I wish I had known how easily they become root bound. I think it's time for transplanting already!

Has anyone had luck propagating celeriac? I have a whole root with just the base touching water with roots about 3" long growing. My plan was to let the roots grow out and then divide the bulbous portion into sections that each have some living root. The leaves died within days of placing in the water, so I've been reluctant to upset her further and decided to do more research.

It seems silly to waste an entire root only to harvest one root. I'm hoping someone has had success, and thus, tips, with turning one root into many.

This post was edited by stbarry on Mon, Feb 11, 13 at 19:00

Hi stbarry,

Well I had to Google celeriac to even know just what it was. In looking at the picture at the link below, I wonder if you could have cut the celeriac a little below the leaves and then rooted it.

Growing Celery Indoors: Never Buy Celery Again

Sue

Please let us know how your experimenting works out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Celeriac

last year i did like Sassy, i grew each of the beans from the 15 bean soup, and black beans, some kind of big huge bean, LOL then i went grocery shopping and bought fruit just for the seeds, i tell hubs that i really want to try this cool fruit LOL so anytime i get anything i try to grow it! i've grown ginger from the ones you get at the store. if i cut the tops off or anything i try to grow it. being here it will be much easier to grow some things because its so damp. (in Oregon) so i'm very excited to see what i can grow :')

Every year I buy a few horseradish roots to make a few jars of really fresh horseradish sauce. Last year I planted the tops of the roots and they grew leaves right away . They are beginning to sprout this spring but I expect it to be a few years befor I can harvest good sized roots. If you buy pencil sized roots from a seed house you can harvest usable roots the first year