Aussie’s genius solution to lettuce issue

With the price of fruit and veg still sky high – thanks to recent flooding in NSW and Queensland, inflation and supply chain issues – user permacultureouttapoverty posted an easy alternative to paying $9 for a head of the leafy salad green: Grow your own.

“Water propagation method, for people who don’t have access to soil or an outside garden space or [have] very little income to get started,” she wrote alongside the clip.

Of course, the first real struggle is finding a head of lettuce that has the roots attached – with the NSW-based TikTok user admitting she found hers “40km away” from where she lives with her husband.

But once she’d found it, the next steps were easy: She filmed herself chopping the head off the cos lettuce, then putting the roots and remaining bit of leaf in a jar of water.

She then put the jar of water on the window sill, removed the remaining leaves, and to ensure that only the roots were submerged, put a skewer through the top of the lettuce to stop it from falling into the water.

“I’ve already started to get some very small regrowth overnight, so [I’d] say a few days,” the woman wrote, asked how long it will take to grow a full head.

“After I have my first regrowth, I’ll be planting it in soil.”

The helpful clip, which has been viewed 245,500 times, attracted hundreds of comments, with many users sharing their own experiences propagating vegetables.

“I do mine with the celery. I now don’t buy celery,” wrote one.

“Doing this with spring onions atm they are growing like crazy,” commented another.

While a third said, “This actually works really well … I do it all the time.”

“I do this! They grow perfectly.”

Another user wrote that you can still propagate your lettuce if it doesn’t have roots by doing “this same method in glass, wait for roots to sprout from [the] bottom, then plant [in soil]”.

Originally published as Australian’s genius way to regrow lettuce and save money