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Cut-and-Come-Again: Hydroponic Hype vs. Reality · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I am your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Ltd.
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  And one of the things I wanted to talk about today was one of these hacks that
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  you often see on Facebook on obscure horticultural gardening groups,
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  and that is cut-and-come-again vegetables.
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  The most extreme case is where someone's harvested a
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  leek and kept the bottom section where the roots were
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  cut off or the bottom of an onion and said look
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  i replanted this in a glass beaker and it's
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  grown again and i can get a second crop from it and celery
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  as well when you've cut a celery off if you keep the base you
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  can get a new crop and it's absolute nonsense because
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  the second regrowth won't produce anywhere
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  near as good a crop as
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  the first one and which was probably grown in soil and
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  then trying to grow it hydroponically in a beaker in the sort a cracky method
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  is a bit ridiculous okay so
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  cut and come again vegetables are very specific
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  and there are a few crops where you can do it leafy greens
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  lettuce but only the loose leaf
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  type of lettuce they're the only type that you can do spinach arugula
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  coriander is that coriander in the uk mizuno pak
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  choy kale chard mustard greens they're the they're the main ones basil parsley
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  cilantro or coriander in the uk don't know what arugula is don't know what we
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  call arugula in the uk chives are a great example of a cut and camp come and
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  get vegetable mint to some extent,
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  they're your main ones and they can be grown commercially as cut and come again.
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  Your closed head lettuce they can't
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  be they can't ever be cut and come again so people showing you
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  that on facebook are talking nonsense chive can
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  because chives are a perennial crop and so
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  it's designed to be cut and come again and time again
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  another if you don't if you don't cut that then it just gets too
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  woody often see people say look at this
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  like patio like slabs of
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  of walking slabs and in between it they've grown
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  at time and they said look it's like a lawn but you
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  don't even need to mow it or prune it i'm thinking time is
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  the one crop where you really do need to cut it
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  otherwise it gets woody and just gets too out of control some microgreens
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  you can get a second crop of so alfalfa clover ryegrass fescue spring onions
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  i've seen it i've seen a lot of indian growers trying to get a second crop of
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  spring onions but then that's only the green parts So the spring onions, the white bit,
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  which we eat certainly in the UK,
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  scallions as you call them in America,
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  you wouldn't have a double crop because they would look unsightly.
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  So, yeah, I think there's a real issue there is the second crop has got to be economically viable.
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  And for some small growers, the herb market, salad greens, then the second growth could be worth it.
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  But for large scale growers looking for vegetables like onions,
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  iceberg lettuce, cabbages, cauliflower, the second cut yields are small,
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  inconsistent and unmarketable.
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  So you just wouldn't do it. some crops you
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  like hops you can get hop asparagus
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  which is the most expensive vegetable in the world the
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  second growth is so weak that you can't actually get a second viable crop even
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  of the flowers on that and sticking in the cannabis family you can rejuvenate
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  cannabis plants once they flowered in the legal cannabis sector however that's
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  more for conserving genetics.
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  And phenotypes than it is for an actual second crop you're
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  far better off starting again with fresh cuttings or fresh seed than
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  actually trying to rejuvenate because then you get
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  issues with the regrowth's not as good it's stunted the
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  growing media is tired there'll be pest and disease issues and
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  uniformity and uniformity is key in all crops and the
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  second crop crucially will be completely ununiform so
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  if you want a uniform crop which most commercial growers
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  do then it's pretty useless you can get
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  a second crop of tomatoes you can put a tomato stem down but
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  you won't get anywhere near the vigor you did
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  of the first stem as well so you don't see commercial growers doing that they
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  just lay the stem down and continually lay it down and down and down and down
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  until it's a really long stem in a grow you know grow greenhouse it's been growing
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  for 11 months or so so definitely don't want to do that could the tomato plant down,
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  So what else can we say about cut and come again vegetables?
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  There is some other options. I guess you could say that rose plants,
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  rose crops, if you cut the dead heads off, then they will produce more flowers
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  because the fruits that are developing the rose hips, they're producing inhibitors
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  of flowering, which prevent more flowers from forming.
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  And so you can get more flowers on your rose plants
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  if you are if you deadhead them so
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  that's almost like a cut and come again however that's not
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  for cut flowers because you always remove the flower when it comes to cut flowers
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  anyway so if you see any of these posts on
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  facebook just ignore them you'll see normally like
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  a lettuce or a celery normally a celery or.
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  An onion or a leek plant in a beaker and
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  with some water or some fertigation solution and someone saying look
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  this hack they don't want you to know about will allow
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  you to get a second crop of all the vegetables you buy in the
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  supermarket and then we're starting to see ai images
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  as well of people cutting over tomato plants and
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  getting tomato plants coming out of them again this is
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  a bit nonsense unless you've got a very strange viviparous
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  tomato variety so always start if
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  it's most herbs vegetables you start with
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  fresh plants fresh seed or fresh starting material
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  rather than trying to harvest it same with potatoes
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  you know you would probably want fresh seed potatoes rather
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  than supermarket born bought ones you can take a small section
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  of a potato and and grow a
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  new plant from it but you're better off planting a whole seed potato okay so
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  that's been hydroponics daily for today the sort of the very restricted use
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  of cut and come again vegetables and the don't believe the hype when it comes
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  to social media that's been hydroponics daily for today one for the amateurs
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  or the people who are new to hydroponics.
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  If you found it useful, then please do like the podcast, leave a review on Apple
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  Podcasts, and make sure you check out utreema.co.uk for all your interesting
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  fertilizers, novel biostimulants, and organic biopesticides.
• 6:42
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  unique, invented by me, a unique technology.
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  All right, until tomorrow, thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.