Frugal Living Tips

MONEY-SAVERS BY USING CUT-OFF BASES OF ONIONS AS NEW PLANTS

by Natalie E. Rowles
(Pinetown KZN S.A.)

A very handy frugal tip is to use bought onions, leeks, celery, etc. cut off bases of these vegetables with a bit of the flesh (say 1cm plus) to regrow them as on-going plants in your raised beds.
When these starter plant bases had rooted and grown into plants, cut most of the leaves off, but leave only one leaf or stem on the new plant for making photosynthesis for the plant, to keep on supplying you with new growth and leaves when harvesting them for the pot.

You never need to sow onions or buy onion sets again if you use the above tip - as the onion will self sow after flowering or make additional onion sets which you can divide later on and plant out further in the raised bed.

When I throw onion bases into my compost heap, they grow and create new onion plants there as well as the damp compost offered an ideal growing medium for them, which I can remove and plant in the raised bed.