Sprouter: Grow Your Scraps!

Roughly 50% of our food in America is thrown away, which totals to 60 million tons of waste annually.

Instead of throwing food away, food scraps (from green onions and avocado seeds for example), can be saved and regrown by being submerged in water.

This tutorial will help you build your own cork sprouter to grow your favorite foods right in your kitchen!

Step 1: Materials and Tools

Materials:

1 glass jar (around 2.5” diameter)

3 corks

1 sheet of paper

Tools:

1 cutting board/mat

1 hot glue gun with glue stick

1 serrated knife (for cutting cork)

1 pen

Estimated time: 1 hour

Step 2: Prep Corks

- Boil corks for 5 minutes in water

- Carefully remove the corks (they will be hot!) and transfer them to a cutting board

- Set corks aside and let cool

- Cut the corks into ¼” pieces (I used 8 pieces, but cut about 10 pieces just in case they come out uneven)

Step 3: Assemble Cork Top

- Trace around your jar to make a circle template

- Line up the cut cork pieces around the template making sure that the middle is big enough to fit an avocado pit

- Hot glue the corks together in a circular formation (make sure the lid sits flat)

- Let cork top dry

Step 4: Grow!

- Fill your jar almost completely with water

- Place the cork top on your jar

For avocado seeds:

- If your avocado seed is too small, you can wrap a rubber band around it so that it does not slide through the hole of the cork cap. You ideally want about half of the seed submerged in water.

For green onions:

- Wrap a string around your jar in a crisscross configuration (see picture) and insert green onion stalks

Step 5: Grow and Regrow!

I decorated my sprouter and etched mine with the text "grow"

Check out this glass etching tutorial

You can continue to use this sprouter and adapt it to your needs.

Have fun and keep growing!