As promised...Sprouting at home

I love fresh sprouts!
I love to eat them, I love to grow them and I love the way they look in my house.
They are so simple and inexpensive to grow and extremely nutritional that I think every kitchen bench needs a sprout garden. Kids love to tend to them and watch them grow as it happens so rapidly and they taste great. Here is a step by step description of how we grow ours.

My favourite seeds to sprout are:

Buckwheat, Wheatgrass,Sunflowers, Snowpeas and Fenugreek



Before planting my seeds, I will soak them in a glass jar of filtered water for about 12 hours to activate the germination process. If I dont do this, I found the seeds, even though were all watered the same, still sprouted at different stages so a tray would be a mixture of mature sprouts and just germinating sprouts, so I highly recommending an initial soaking.

The kids enjoy the sprouting process and are always keen to get involved with the soaking, planting and watering. When they are a part of the growing cycle, they have a greater interest in eating them and are freely able to 'pluck' a sprout at their leisure to enjoy.

I like to use terracotta trays to grow my sprouts in. Not only do they look nice as a living table centre piece and around the house, they are inexpensive and do the job perfectly. I bought mine from the nursery section at the local hardware store. They are sold as trays under planter pots and come in a range of sizes and shapes. I use the round and have a variety of sizes to accomodate for my variety of seeds. They do come in a sealed and unsealed versions, so be sure to ask for the 'unsealed' pot bases as the water needs to soak into the terracotta so you dont end up with mouldy seeds and boggy soil. As for the soil I use, I was just digging up a small patch out of my vegie garden, but as that space is limited and my plants are spreading rapidly, I have chosen to buy a bag of potting mix which will last me almost a months worth of sprouting. I use a certified organic potting mix also from the hardware store.

After I have soaked the seeds and spread a layer of organic soil into each terrocatta tray, I then rinse the seeds and spread them evenly over the soil.I then add a thin sprinkle of soil over the seeds to act as a light mulch to keep the seeds moist and help the germination process otherwise they will dry out quickly and will be slow to sprout.

The kids and I will water our newly planted seeds once a day and place them on a bench in the house that gets a little morning sunlight each day. Within 2 days the sprouts begin to emerge.

 And within 5 days, they will be ready to be eaten. I have enough trays of rotating seeds and seedlings to keep an endless supply of fresh sprouts to add to our daily meals. I love to have a couple of sprouted trays ready to harvest as living, edible table centre pieces while eating to freely add to our everyday meals.

This is such a fun and easy way to enjoy your greens and get the kids to love them to.