20 pledges for 2020: How to regrow plants in water at home during lockdown

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Times like this, where it seems the whole world is living in a moment of historic uncertainty, bring inevitable instability into all our lives and spaces.

Our peers and colleagues now sit across from us in living rooms through Zoom meetings and virtual happy hours; our roommates, spouses and children have all become coworkers in shared working spaces; our jobs have been brought home with us — if we even still have them — for the foreseeable future.

These moments also have the ability to bring us back to our roots — our humanity. As much of the world now lives under some form of stay-at-home orders, we can all take this time to invest in growth, building something from scratch and starting anew.

My friend Hanna Sarangan, a chef and food business consultant based in Goa and Greece, recently said: “Growing our own food is a basic survival skill, and we are reminded of this now more than ever.”

Sarangan recommends making use of our time in isolation by starting off small and planting seeds to grow anything from mustard and methi, to coriander and fennel, all of which grow easily at home and can be used in a variety of meals.

If you’ve never grown your own food before, I suggest starting off even more basic. Many ingredients we use on a daily basis can be grown without any soil. Here are ten common foods you can regrow in a small cup or container of water to help reduce your grocery bills and get you into the spirit of growth and gardening, via Don’t Waste the Crumbs:

1. Bok Choy

2. Cabbage

3. Carrot greens

4. Celery

5. Fennel

6. Garlic chives

7. Green onion

8. Leeks

9. Lemongrass

10. Lettuce

Some of these plants only require small, shallow bowls of water, like lettuce, which you can regrow by simply cutting off the bottom of the head and leaving the remaining piece in water for a few days.

Others, like green onions — a personal favourite — can regrow several times over using a small, somewhat deeper cup. Simply chop off the green pieces you want to use, save the white portion at the bottom that you’d normally throw away and instead leave it standing in the cup of water.

There are plenty of other foods that can be regrown in water, as the article continues, even pineapple and ginger.

If you have a green thumb already and know your way around a garden, perhaps now is the moment to try planting something new: delicate orchids, a more challenging cauliflower or even onions, which take time and care but ultimately yield bountiful rewards.

When you garden, you learn that you can only control so much. Unexpected rains will inundate crops. A summer heatwave may wipe out an entire harvest. But somehow, someway, seeds always find a way to sprout.

Now is the perfect time to stretch limits and imaginations, try out new experiments and build something to be proud of. Growing a love for gardening is an act that will feed you for a lifetime.