Possible to grow leek from vegetable scraps in tropical weather?

Over the years, have seen lots of Youtube videos on rooting and regrowing vegetables from vegetable scraps. However, my experience doing that in tropical weather have not been very successful all this while. Most of the time, the high humidity causes the vegetable scraps to rot eventually.


During the Covid-19 lock down period, with time at hand and homebound, I decided to document the whole journey of regrowing leek from scraps using both water method and soil. 

Leek is chosen for convenience as it is supposedly easy to grow. Some do look lush initially but unfortunately all eventually never able to flourish further. In short, it is a fun discovery journey but to grow for food, it is better off to start with proper seeds or cuttings.

We started off with leek from the supermarket. Cut off 2 inches of base. The rest we use them for cooking as per normal.
Fig 1,  Two inches of the base. No roots. We started off with this
Water rooting is used for a start. 1-2mm of water in glass bottles sitting beside kitchen windowsill. Bright light with filtered sunlight ( window is tinted). Water needs to be changed daily.

Fig 2,   Day 3. Small growth. Looking good
Fig 3,  One week old. More green.
Fig 4,  Two weeks old. About 5 inches height.
Fig 5, Three weeks old. Growing well. But edges of some leaves started to yellow.
Fig 6,  The center portion looking lush and nice. Roots forming at the base too 
Fig 7,  Four weeks old. Sign of reaching it's peak and going downhill. Started to get messy too.
Fig 8, The stems eventually rot and both died off.

We start to wonder at this point if the plant needs more nutrients at some point or if more sunlight will help. We therefore went on to grow the same thing in nutrient rich soil and under grow LEDs. However, the result is even more disappointing.


Fig 9,  Three days old leek in soil
Fig 10,  One week old. Rot and died.

They actually rot and died off faster.

This got us thinking if we transplant the water rooted leeks at week 3 into soil with light, will they do better? 

We proceed to do a short cut by buying those leeks with roots. Cut off 2 inches and buried the whole thing with roots into the soil. We did manage to grow till they flowered but again the regrown leeks were skinny and  not very worthwhile as food.


Fig 11,  One week old, leeks with roots into soil
Fig 12,  Two weeks old. Growing well
Fig 13,  2.5 weeks old, flowering beautifully
Fig 14,  Three weeks old. Started to rot and eventually died off.
Conclusion:
Growing from vegetable scraps does look great in tropical weather for the initial 1 to 3 weeks, depending on which rooting methods you use. You may be able to harvest off this additional growth for that one small additional cooking. 
It is a fun educational journey but for food, for both yield and quality, it may be better off to start from seeds/cuttings.
However, I never try using hydro solution instead of water for rooting/growing. Those keen in using hydroponics method may want to test it out.







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