Cover image by Daniel Dent Photography by Justine Hand, unless specified otherwise

Here's a weekend project: the next time you make a hardy winter stew, save the vegetable scraps and start a compost garden. Keep reading for a DIY guide to creating your own compost garden indoors. 

For leafy vegetables like carrots and beets, select specimens with the tops intact, then cut off all but 2-3 inches of stem.

Prepare a bed of gravel, small stones and/or soil in a shallow dish or pie plate.

Below: the planting process.

Remember this technique with avocado pits? It works with potatoes too.

After a couple of weeks, the carrot tops are coming along nicely.

Below: sprouting beans

Garlic greens can be harvested to add a bit of flavor to soups and stews.

The beets begin to  grow.

Above: the garden after three weeks.

Children make great garden helpers.