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Tuesday 21 April 2015

Tuesday tip: New veggies from scraps

Growing veggies from scraps is nothing new. Pinterest and Eco sites overflow with tips on what to do with your veggie scraps. But if, like me you've tried placing that onion or celery end in water, you would know that after a couple of days the bottom of the vegetable goes all yucky. Also you're told to change the water every day. Ain't no mummy got time for dat 😉

The solution is to soak up your solution (the water that is) and there are simple practical ways to do this like placing the scraps on an wet old sponge. However since there is nothing aestically pleasing about a manky old sponge, how about resting your scraps on some water beads. 

If you haven't heard about these pretty little things then here's a bit of background.

Water beads or Crystal Soil is a water absorbent polymer, which is able to absorb and hold 100-200 times its volume of water for a long time. 

Each 10 grams Crystal Soil will absorb at least 1 litre of water and can fill up about 1 litre vase. Each bead will expand to approximately 1.0 cm in size. They are also

  • Odor Free and Insect Free.
  • Biodegradable & Environmental Safe.
  • No poisonous ingredients, No pollution , & No fading.
So you don't really need much of the stuff to get started. 


At the moment I've got a leek and some bok choy growing on my window sil. And I've only used about half a pack for all of them. Best bit is that they are reusable so once these little guys go into the soil you can use the beads again for the next lot of kitchen scraps. Best part is that I haven't touched these guys since putting them on to grow. No water changing no refilling. 

And if there comes a day when you no longer need them just let them dry out back into their original size (about the size of a course grain of sand) or if they break and don't look as attractive anymore just pop them into the garden. They are fantastic for keeping your soil hydrated and plants healthy. 

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