Who Here Sprouts

David Trammel's picture

Within each Circle, I'm slowly outlining a progression of Study for Green Wizards. Some are pretty detailed and others just bare threads. For Gardening and Composting I have a good idea of the progression of skills to learn. They would begin with Seed Sprouts as a food addition, then work into micro greens, then container gardens and then small scale backyard gardens, before looking at larger farming. I know there are several of you at that larger scale.

I've just gotten my seed flats prepped for planting to get start my micro green experiments and several flats prepped for seed for plants in my garden this Spring. The one thing I have no experience with is doing sprouts.

Its one of those easy kind of on the shelf growing skills that can actually add substantially to your food supply with nutritious and easy ingredients to your meals that every Green Wizard should know. I guess I'm asking what seeds make good sprouts, how do you do them, what equipment do you need and what kind of problems and challenges you have had?

Let me know and I'll try and get the supplies and seeds to do them as a side project to the micro greens this Spring to post pictures for those like me who haven't sprouted.

alice's picture

I agree that seed sprouting is a good thing to learn and easy and you hardly need any space at all.

One I use regularly especially during winter and spring is fenugreek. The seeds sold in along with other spices are often fertile. I soak a tablespoonful overnight or during a day and then transfer into something easy to rinse. I generally rinse them twice a day until the seed husks rinse off the sprouts and then add to salads. It takes somewhere about two weeks in the climate where I live, I think it's temperature dependent so I often have two or three batches in various stages, rinse them at the same time.

One thing to be aware of is that it is possible to incubate unhelpful organisms that can make people ill so it's a good practice to wash hands before handling. Not that I have ever made myself or anyone else ill with them as far as I know, but I think this aspect is one reason there aren't too many small scale commercial operations making sprouts for sale as various food-bourne illnesses have been traced to poor practice raising food sprouts at times. It's a good thing to be aware of the local microbiological hazards. Ours really aren't too bad in the UK.