No seeds? No Problem. These Grocery Store Items Will Grow for You
In a perfect world, one could trot to the grocery store and get a decent garden’s worth of seeds from their seed rack. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. Sometimes, the seeds we thought we could count on are unavailable.
It may be the seeds in your prepper collection are old and no longer viable. It may be that everyone else is looking to grow a survival garden too, and there aren’t any seeds available. If you still have some produce kicking around your fridge or pantry though, you may not be out of luck.
Below are 12 examples of ordinary grocery store food items you can kickstart your garden with.
Celery
If you’ve ever gotten a bunch of celery from the store, you probably know there’s no seeds hidden amongst the leaves. What you can do is reroot the base of the celery plant in soil, and it will regrow. Celery are biennials, which means if you plan to collect seeds to keep the harvest going you will need to wait until their second year for it to flower and go to seed.
Carrots
At first glance, carrots don’t look like a viable source of seeds, however if you are patient you can get another harvest from them. Carrots can be rerooted using the tops, especially if you get the kind with a whole top available.
Once again, carrots are biennial, so if you allow them to grow for 2 years, they will go to flower in the second year and you can collect seeds after.
Lettuce
Some grocery store lettuce include the roots (usually it’s called “Live Lettuce.”) You can regrow this lettuce from the roots by soaking it in water for 12-24 hours and then planting in soil. Eventually the lettuce will start to taste bitter and less good to eat—this is a sign the lettuce is about to go to seed.
Let it bolt (produce flowers) so you can then collect the seeds for a new harvest.
Tomato
The seeds from a ripe tomato can potentially germinate. If you’ve tried popping a seed or two from a tomato into the ground and got disappointing results though, it may be because you didn’t ferment them first.
Tomatoes produce their seeds in a warm, moist and dark environment. These are typically all the signals that seeds use to figure out they are in good growing conditions and sprout. Why then, do you almost never cut open a seedling to find the seeds sprouted?
To prevent this, the tomato secretes growth inhibitors such as abcisic acid to stop the seeds from growing prematurely. Without first removing these inhibitors, the tomato seed is less likely to sprout.
Luckily, removing them is easy. You simply simulate the signals the seed uses to determine that it’s time to grow. Place the seeds from the tomato, goop and all, into a jar and just let it sit for a few days.
When it gets gross and moldy, it has rotted. Rot is what the plant is looking for. Rinse the seeds, dry them, and now you have viable seeds!
Strawberry
You’ve probably looked at all the tiny little seeds on a strawberry and wondered if you could plant them. Technically, those little seeds, actually called achenes, are the fruits of the plant! The part we like to eat is the receptacle. Those achenes all have seeds inside them, but just like the tomato there’s a trick to getting them to sprout.
Strawberries need to go through cold weather stratification to grow. You can convince them to sprout by keeping them in the fridge or freezer for 6-8 weeks before planting them.
You’ll also want to separate them from the strawberry. You can do this by mashing the strawberry and then straining it to separate the achenes from the receptable. (The seeds from the ‘fruit’.)
Squash
Most hard sided fruits with seeds in the center have viable seeds. This includes butternut squash, pumpkins, and also things like watermelon, honeydew melon and cantaloupe. Nothing special is needed for most of these. Separate them from the pulp, rinse, dry and store until you’re ready to plant.
Red Bell Peppers
Ripe peppers have viable seeds. This includes both red bell peppers and hot peppers like habaneros. Green peppers however, are unlikely to sprout because they were picked before the seed is mature.
Again, nothing special is needed for peppers, simply separate them from the pepper, plant and grow!
Garlic
Garlic is fun because it is so easy to grow, and you’re probably already a pro at prepping them! All you have to do is separate the garlic head into cloves. Each clove will grow a new head given time. Big cloves tend to create larger heads, while small cloves tend to produce smaller heads. Plant with the flat side down, pointy side up.
Green onions
You’ve probably seen that one trick on youtube where someone regrows their green onions by putting the leftover roots in water. More green shoots sprout, which can then be harvested again. Although the roots aren’t seeds, if you plant them in soil they will regrow more green shoots, and they will last longer because they can get nutrition from the soil.
Dry Beans
Bags of dried beans are another easy source of seeds. Each bean has the potential to grow into a bean plant, that will produce pods with more beans in it. Beans are a great source of protein, calories, and most bean plants are vigorous and will produce a lot more beans than their single start.
No prep work is needed, it’s all been done for you. Just plant after the danger of frost and grow! Please note, canned beans will not grow as they have been cooked by the canning process.
Dry Peas
These are a bit harder to find at the grocery store, but you can sometimes find them bagged or in bulk bin. Take note, freeze dried peas will not grow. You need plain, dry peas for it to work. More common are split peas available in storage. This is only half of a seed, but the good news is a few of these may sprout if treated properly.
To see if you can get any peas out of them, soak your split peas for 24 hours, rinse them, and then put them in a bag in a wet paper towel. Check them regularly. A few of these may show signs of sprouting through a little root.
The ones with roots you can plant. Discard the rest.
Potatoes
You’ve probably seen your potatoes starting to grow if you leave them in the pantry too long. All of those spots on the potato, called eyes, are a place for a new potato plant to grow. You can get several potato starts from one potato by cutting up the potato with at least one eye per piece.
Stone Fruits
If you have a big space and are growing for the long term, it’s possible to get fruit trees from the pits of stone fruit. Stone fruits are any fruit that has a pit in the center of them. Think peach, plum or cherry trees.
Most stone fruits need to be soaked for 24 hours, and may need you to simulate winter by putting them in the freezer in a damp paper towel inside a plastic bag for 30-60 days. Once this is done you can plant the pit and hopefully raise a fruit tree.
It takes a very long time for a tree to grow, and for it to grow big enough to bear fruit. It’s likely by the time these do grow fruit the danger you see will long since be passed, but if you want long term sustainability—or just think this will be fun—it’s a worthy project.
Things That Won’t Grow
A few things at the grocery store may have seeds, but they won’t grow (or grow very rarely.) Green peppers, cucumbers and zucchini are all examples of produce that may have seeds but probably won’t result in seedlings.
This is because the produce we like is picked in an immature state. Since the fruit was immature, the seeds are also immature. It’s not completely impossible that a seed will sprout, but it’s very unlikely.
Other grocery store items may grow into a plant but aren’t necessarily worth it. Sweet potatoes for example are actually a tropical plant that requires a very long growing season. They may work in warmer climates like California, but shorter growing seasons elsewhere in the world may require starting them indoors or growing them indoors entirely.
If you’re not sure, save the seed anyway and give it a whirl. At worst, you may have wasted a bit of time and soil. At best, you’ll have one more new variety to add to your collection.
Posted in Uncategorized by Andrea with no comments yet.
Welcome to the Survival Garden Blog!
Our world has never been more perilous. Wildfires are getting bigger and more complex to fight, droughts are lasting longer, and political upheaval is continuously changing our lives. Our supply chains are solid, but even these can be shaken by disasters, manmade or otherwise.
It takes just one look at empty store shelves, quiet ports, and those signs limiting purchases due to shortages, to make you think about what would happen if the problem continues.
Keeping long-storing essentials is one way to prepare for outages, but if you have the room, nothing beats a garden for facing down food shortages.
That’s what this blog is about. If you want to plant a survival garden, but don’t know how to grow, this blog aims to help you avoid mistakes, so you can grow a bountiful garden every year.
At this time, this blog is just a seed. I don’t have a lot to offer yet because the blog is still new. In recognition of that, here is a completely free e-book I have written, no strings attached. (No, not even that stupid “I’ll give you the e-book in exchange for your email” trade. It’s just free.)
If you like the idea of this blog, please bookmark our page, and keep coming back for more gardening advice.
Posted in Uncategorized by Andrea with no comments yet.