Grocery Store Starter Plants

It seems so harmless.

A bag of dried beans from the store costs much less than a packet of seeds. Those sprouting potatoes are simply begging for a soil blanket. You can start new celery and carrot plants from their ends, so why not?

Sprouting potatoes (Thamizhpparithi Maari) CC BY-SA 4.0

You see countless suggestions about how to start a garden for free using grocery store produce. It sounds like a great idea. But it isn’t.

Safe to eat doesn’t mean safe to grow

Grocery store produce is certified safe to eat. Aside from the occasional outbreak of E.coli in salad greens, our food supply is impressive in its ability to feed so many people safely and affordably. But those plants are not certified safe to plant. They can harbor pest eggs, larvae, bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. Some plant diseases never go away once they establish themselves in your landscape.

​Plant pandemics

Global trade and changing climate are contributors to plant pandemics. Sweeping plant diseases make our food cost more. Adding potentially infested or infected plants to your garden can increase those problems.

Grocery store basil (Jeffery Martin) Public Domain

As appealing and economical as it may seem, using dried beans, sprouting potatoes, or rootbound basil from the grocery store to start your garden can create a mountain of headaches and spread diseases into new regions where plants cannot protect themselves.

In a word: don’t do it. If you must, put grocery store plants in containers and quarantine them as you would for any other new plant.