Indoor Gardening with Kitchen Waste

Grow a garden with an extra dose of environmental-friendliness! Your child will delight in making her own indoor garden by growing fruits and vegetables out of discarded plant sections that would have otherwise been thrown away. Without even realizing it, she will be introduced to the science behind plant growth. She may be surprised to find out what part of some of her favorite fruits and vegetables she is actually eating!

Introduce this experiment by talking about the six basic parts of plants: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruit, and seeds. Ask her to think about some of the plant-based foods, including carrots and pineapples, that she eats regularly and to guess what part of the plant each one is. She probably already knows that pineapples are fruit but does she know that carrots are actually roots?

Cute Carrot Top Plants:

What You Need:

• 2–3 carrot tops, cut about 1” from the top
• Shallow bowl
• Pebbles
• Sand
• Water

What You Do:

1. Ask your child to fill the shallow bowl with the sand so that it is about 1/2” deep. She can decorate the edges of the sand with pebbles.
2. Have your child carefully trim off any leaves from the carrot top so that they are not any more than 1/2” long.
3. Get your child to put the carrot tops into the sand, so that the bottoms are close to the bottom of the bowl.
4. Ask her to fill the bowl with lukewarm water, to the level of the top of the sand.
5. The bowl should be left in a sunny are. Have your child water her carrot top plants every day to make sure that they don’t dry out.
6. You and your child will see leaves sprouting within a week. Within a few weeks, the plants should be quite tall!

Pretty Pineapple Plants: