In Planthae, Elena Páez's vegetable cabinet, in the center of Madrid, a workshop with a curious name is given: From the seeds of your garbage you will obtain your new plants.
For those who like plants, certainly a booming decorative resource, it may be interesting to discover that there is a very easy way to not only avoid unsustainable marketing channels, but also save money without giving them up.
In exchange for just maybe a little patience it is possible to obtain free plants.
It is a matter of learning to cut, propagate or seed.
"The crazy consumption of plants is to be considered ecological, but it is a consumption equal to or worse than any other," explains Páez, recalling one of the incentives behind this initiative.
The approach is simple: instead of buying a lemon tree in the supermarket, for example, it is about getting a plant to sprout from the pip of a lemon, which will become a tree and bear fruit in a few years.
Páez recalls that you only have to think about the cycle of wild plants, about what happens when an animal feeds on a decomposing fruit and takes its seed to another place.
Without leaving the kitchen, you can imitate this natural cycle, taking the seeds before consuming the plant.
More information
Your neighbor from 2ºD, that nice one, is going to kill your plants this summer: this is how you can avoid it
Seed a melon
The summer months are a good time to extract seeds from that sweet and fresh melon that tops tabletops.
Elena Páez points out that the more ecological the fruit is, and, therefore, the fewer genetic modification processes it has undergone, the more chances of success that seed will have.
"You have to put the seeds in water, and those that float are thrown away," she explains.
“The rest we put in the fridge, wrapped in aluminum foil, for three weeks.
The goal of this is to provide darkness and cold, so that they experience a false winter.”
Melon seeds are sown between late spring and early summer, and your plant needs plenty of sun and soil to thrive.
A Japanese melon and its seeds.
Parinda Yatha (Getty Images/EyeEm)
Get seeds from a bell pepper
"Something that many people do not know is that you have to wait for the peppers to ripen for the seeds to be viable."
This is the advice of Ester Casanovas, responsible for the Picarona blog and author of the book
Hortelanos de ciudad
.
“For a frying pepper to be ripe it has to change color, from green to red.
When you open it, the seeds, instead of the white color we are used to, have to have a creamy shade of brown”.
Reproduce a basil plant in water
A 'tradescantia zebrina' in a clear glass jar to take root in the water before being planted in the ground. Etienne Jeanneret (Getty Images)
Casanovas confesses another secret, this time referring to the basil plants that more and more people treasure in their kitchen: "To extend the life of the plant, it is appropriate to prune it regularly."
"Not just remove the leaves, but cut by the twig," he notes.
"When you take it to the kitchen you can put it in a glass of water and it lasts up to a week in good condition, and most likely it will take root, with which you could get a new plant."
Casanovas says that when it has enough roots, it can be transplanted into a small pot with soil.
After this process, you have to keep it in the same place where the glass of water was, watering it daily, until the first leaves come out, a sign that it is already strong enough to take it outside,
Cutting a tomato
It is true that tomato seeds can be obtained directly from the fruit itself, "removing the gel that surrounds them with a teaspoon, but without removing the flesh", as explained by Irene Galicia, co-founder with Lucía Frere of the
online
store Cultivando .it is.
Two or three days in a glass of water to ferment, strain, dry and store in a dry, cool and dark place later.
However, for those who already have a tomato plant at home, it may be interesting to learn how to propagate by cuttings.
On the branches of the tomato plants other smaller ones called “suckers” arise that must be cut so that the plant distributes its resources well.
Westend61 (Getty Images)
It is well known by all informed tomato plant owners that they need to be pruned.
On the branches other smaller ones called “suckers” arise that have a very bad reputation, because they force the plant to distribute its resources among parts that will not be used for human consumption.
What Irene Galicia suggests is a novel utility for those despised suckers.
“You can put them in water to root, which they do super fast,” she explains.
"If a branch breaks, which is very common, you can do the same and get a new plant."
And what about decorative indoor plants?
“Almost all indoor plants can be cut with a cutting with a clean cut, above at least one node (although it is better if there are two or three) so that more roots come out when we put it in water, which we will change every two or three days”, explains Galicia.
"Depending on the plant, in one or two weeks we will have roots of five or four centimeters, which is a perfect length to plant them in the ground."
The expert recommends this method for plants with soft stems, and for those with more woody stems, such as rosemary, and she is inclined to use a liquid or powdered rooting agent.
"Some very easy to cut are the iresines, the cleos...", but she points out the flowering plants as perfect for extracting seeds.
“All plants that have flowers have seeds.
In some, like the nasturtium, they are very easy to identify,
because they are quite big.
Without a doubt, the most curious of plants will want to try their luck.