Growing plants from supermarket food - is it possible?

[Mummabear04]

I am not very green fingered and don't know much about plant growing but I was wondering if it would be possible to grow veg/herbs from supermarket food? I've seen Instagram videos of how to grow spring onions, tomatoes, strawberries and garlic. I also would like to have some plant pots full of herbs - is it possible to do this too?

I have a very sunny garden but no green house etc and the idea would be to grow it all in big pots. Do you think I might manage it and any tips or pointers? (Explain it to me like I'm a child because I don't even know the basics!)

With tomatoes, chilies and peppers it's a case of saving seed and growing them next year.

With herbs you need to repot them and in the case of herbs like basil divide them into more pots.

Never tried to grow the rest at all or from supermarket veg simply because they are either too cheap e.g. onions, potatoes so cost more to grow your own or the varieties you can get if you grow them yourself e.g. strawberries, baby carrots are a lot more tasty.

Tomatoes are easy to grow and rewarding, you’re probably best just to buy a little tomato plant or two. Easier than a packet of seeds and you don’t end up with too many. Raspberries and garlic also easy, and some herbs. If you know any gardeners they might often have spare plants eg raspberries and herbs. Do you have to use pots? Herbs and raspberries are ok in them mostly, but plants in pots need more watering than plants in the ground

I tend to buy a supermarket basil plant and then split/repot it into several new pots. Lasts for ages as opposed to the couple of weeks you'd expect from the supermarket one.

My son plants tomatoes from tomato seeds from the fridge. I've suggested we buy seeds/seedlings which have been specifically bred for home growing but he refuses and has had some success with them.

I tried the growing a pineapple from a pineapple top once and also ginger root, no success with either but I'm sure you'll get replies from people with much more experience and skill than me!
I'll look forward to seeing them too.

Did you have any specific ideas yourself?

I'd really like to grow rosemary, sage, Thyme, mint, chives...basically things that are a bit more hardy than basil as I live in a windy area and it can get quite cold.

I'd like to start growing some easy veg and for it all to survive outdoors without much input...

I planted a custard apple seed and have a plant on my windowsill. I doubt very much it will ever grow into a tree to provide me with fruit. It's just one in a long line of plants I've grown from pips, seeds and stones.

Mint is very easy to propogate and you could do it from a supermarket plant. It grows/spreads very quickly

I did grow some Thai basil from some that I bought from the supermarket although it was tricky as they seemed to leave mostly the leaves in the packet, rather than the nodes that you need on the stems.

Have a look at some YouTube videos

I found supermarket rosemary and rosemary you get from a seller cost about the same price.

With rosemary just repot it and make sure you water it so it doesn't dry out completely but don't drown it.

After about a year, so next year, if you want to you can put it in the ground. Just be warned it can grow into a massive bush.

Don't put mint into the ground otherwise it will take over your garden just grow it in a pot.

Also Google whether you should fertilize herbs. Mediterranean herbs grow in poor soil so shouldn't be fertilised.

You can buy it's not always worth it.

If there might potentially be something left over and likely to go bad then give it a go but don't waste money and effort buying them especially to grow. Also with some veg they aren't always at the right stage to have viable seeds.

Lots of supermarket food like sweet potatoes are sprayed to prevent sprouting, not all are but it is commonly done. This is partly for longer term shelf life and sometimes down to plant breeders rights or who are allowed to grow the variety.

I do grow on pot herbs if I've bought them and not used them all up, they are usually made up of loads of small young plants, spring onions and carrots and many other veg and herbs have loads of wildlife value and great flowers and seed heads. I've quite often set one or two aside for flowering alone each year.

This guy on instagram grows lots from supermarket fruit & veg and has written a book on it too
www.instagram.com/simonakeroydgardenwriter?igsh=MTY5d2w0OGc5OHRlcw==

It’s easy to grow supermarket herbs and chilli. You just need to split them and repot.

Ditto the potted lettuces they sometimes sell. You can just cut off leaves and they will regrow. You can do the same with a bunch of untrimmed spring onions.

I wouldn’t recommend growing tomatoes from the seeds of supermarket tomatoes (or any other seeds from food). You have no idea what the bees have been up to 😂 The resulting tomatoes may well be very different from the tomato the seed came from.

Interesting fact: Savoy cabbage, sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli are all the same species. If you grow a seed from, for example, a cauliflower, you won’t grow a cauliflower unless it was pollinated with pollen from another cauliflower. The same with apples. A seed from Granny Smith won’t grow a Granny Smith. All apple trees of a specific variety are clones of one tree. And bananas but they don’t even have seeds…

Garlic is easy. You just buy a whole bulb and split it up into cloves, then plant then separately. They can go in the ground or in pots. Fresh herbs come growing in a pot of soil anyway, so they are relatively easy, but watch out for slugs outdoors. They will eat an entire basil plant in one night.

You can grow apple, pear, cherry and plum trees, just sow the pips or stones. They will take a very long time to start fruiting though. I have heard of people growing citrus fruit as well, but they aren't really hardy enough in the UK.

This is a rosemary plant I grew hydroponically from a bit of cut supermarket rosemary about 3 or 4 years ago. Dead easy to do.

Bananas do have seeds.

They are small and black.

However you are right bananas Ike grapes, apples, pears etc are essentially clones.

Yes and no re closely related plants. The brassicas we grow all come from the same ancestral species Brassica oleracea but they have been subject to artificial selection for specific traits for hundreds if not thousands of years. Basically the ancestral Brassica oleracea was a variable weedy plant that was easy to select and breed out some traits in favour of another trait. Artificial selection builds up a set of DNA so they end up often breeding true to the selected trait.

So while closely related they are not exactly the same plants anymore. Accidental cross pollination with another cultivar i.e. broccoli x sprouts, may result in a hybrid, it can happen but it's pretty unsuccessful for the most part. If you collect seed from a cauliflower, you most often end up growing another cauliflower because the successful pollination to viable seed production at individual plant level is often like for like in many cases.

With spring onions you can cut the green tops off and they will grow back again at least three times. I've only done this with ones I've grown myself though but you could try plating the bottom half of a few from the supermarket and see if it works. It might work with leeks as they're the same family but I don't know.

I always buy the potted herbs, separate them out a bit and plant them out, much cheaper than buying them from a nursery IME. I had a rosemary that got really big but was then killed by a wet winter unfortunately. Basil I always keep inside. Mint will take over if you plant it out, it can even escape though the base of a pot so watch out!

Strawberry plants are fairly cheap to buy, i wouldn't bother trying to grow them from seeds from supermarket strawberries.

I'd recommend growing some giant mustard greens, great in a sandwich or salad, grow quickly and are really easy to grow. Seeds are dead cheap. Rocket and pea shoots are two other tasty options to go with it.

This is who I have been following and who has inspired me😂

Excellent! I want a massive bush of rosemary! Do I really have to keep it in doors for a year? I'd love to have it in the garden as I don't have much space in my house!

How would I propagate supermarket mint successfully? 🤔

Oh my goodness it's amazing! How did you do it exactly? Just from a stick of rosemary from a packet or from a pot plant?

I have an apple tree I planted from a store bought apple seed over a decade ago. It is in a pot but blossoms and produces small fruit every year. Only thing holding it back is the pot!

Potatoes, very easy, just bung 'em in a pot of soil.

I’ve had better success from a garden centre herb plant over supermarket herb plants.

If you get a supermarket one then the key is to divide it into multiple pots.

I’m not green fingered but had lots of success growing carrots which were in a big pot outdoors in all weathers.

Supermarket bananas don’t have seeds. They are a sterile triploid variety.

I probably should have said if you grow home collected cauliflower seeds, you won’t necessarily get a cauliflower oryou may end up with a not very tasty cauliflower. Like dog breeds - you only get poodle puppies if both the parents are poodles.

If you want to grow things from seed to eat, OP, packets of seeds are cheap, they are disease free and you know what you are getting.

Supermarket potatoes should be avoided because of diseases

horticulture.co.uk/potatoes/store-bought/#:~:text=The%20main%20reason%20is%20that,rid%20of%20once%20they%20arrive.