I love green onions, don’t you? They add a subtle onion flavor to dishes without all the tears. While I enjoy white and red onions, I am SO sensitive to the gas they emit when cut that I am a mess of tears with a knife in hand. It’s not a good situation.

But enter the humble green onion…

In the spirit of #wastenotwantnot, I’m taking the time in this post to encourage you to save the root ends of your green onions and regrow them. You don’t need anything fancy or expensive here. You also don’t need to spend a lot of time and effort, because these fuckers are resilient! With a little water, soil, and sunlight, you’ll have green onions in just a few weeks.

Equipment:

• planter or a plant pot
• soil for potted plants
• the root and white of used green onions (about an inch of white before the root)
• garden gloves (optional)
• sunlight
• water

In a small planter or plant pot, dump in your soil. Using your finger, make wells in the soil deep enough to cover the top of the green onion roots with an inch of soil. Obviously, one well for each root. Place your roots, roots down, into the wells and cover with an inch of soil. Keep the pot in direct sunlight indoors or outdoors and water when the soil looks or feels dry. So you may only need to water every few days. Within a couple of days, you’ll see green start to poke out, and in a few weeks, you’ll have full grown green onions. Harvest them by gently digging up the onions from the root and remove, clean, and use, repeating the same growing process.

Enjoy and please let me know how this works out for you!