Lifehack: Make your vegetable scraps work for you, grow your own pineapple!

You’ve been wanting to get in on rooftop gardening, but you don’t have access to your roof. Bummer. But there’s hope for you yet, thanks to some tips from the Black Thumb Gardener. If you’ve got vegetable scraps lying around your apartment, you can grow vegetables out of them, which will both save you money and make you feel accomplished. Just a tip: you won’t be able to do this in a windowless box, so you won’t be able to do this in your room if you don’t have a window.

Some of the ideas are a little complicated, but growing, say, garlic sounds easy. Just put a single clove of garlic in pot, with the root side down in the soil and stick it by a warm section of the window. When the garlic shoots pop up, cut them down and the plant will put its resources into growing a big ol’garlic bulb. Onions are easy too. You have to cut off the roots when you’re preparing them anyway, so instead of throwing them away, keep a half-inch below the roots and then put it in a pot covered in topsoil. Keep it moist and by a sunny window and soon you’ll be rolling in onions.

Maybe all of that is kid stuff to you. Black Thumb also tells you how to grow your own pineapple, but be warned: this is a heavy investment of your time. On the other hand, then when someone is eating it and compliments you, you can say “Oh, thanks, I grew it myself. N.B.D.” Anyway, first, cut the top of the pineapple off and then cut at it until you’ve exposed the root buds. Put the pineapple roots down in a container of warm water and when it starts rooting, move it to a larger container with soil in it. One big enough for say, a pineapple, and then water it everyday. For two to three years. But hey: you’ve grown your own damn pineapple. Check out their post for plenty of other ideas on how to grow lemongrass, avocados and potatoes, among other vegetables.