Sprouting Hope - Forcing Spring

We are Hunkered Down, Washing hands and Sanitizing everything, watching news (or sometimes not), and hoping for Spring to come soon.  It's not!  We have at least 3 feet of snow still and it is getting into single digits at night still here in the Big Lake Burg which means we have to force spring a little by growing some sprouts!

We talked about our Salad Garden last week (read that here). Sprouts can add another level of flavor, texture and spice to your salad and they are simple to do!  Especially if your directions are to "Stay Home"!  

Start with a couple of wide mouth, glass jars and some sprouting seeds.  The above shown are Alfalfa, Mung Bean and Adzuki Beans.  These are a few of my favorites, but just about anything can be used as sprouting seeds - including radish!  I have also used my old seed as sprouts to "test" the seed stock - If I have a package of old seeds, Ill put a tablespoon in a jar and sprout it to see what kind of germination I might expect.  No germination means I don't bother to plant that seed.  I have not sprouted tomatoes this way - Im not sure I would like that flavor, but I have done broccoli, cauliflower, and even peppers this way, radish is spicy and delicious too.

Today we'll just work with the Alfalfa seeds to make things easy - and so my pictures can tell the story.

So take one of the jars, a ring and I am using a lightweight paper napkin as my breatheable cover.  They make kits you can get that are for sprouting and have rinse lids and such, but I am making do right now since I dont have my sprout lids (I used to have them and they are no where to be found).  Make sure the paper napkin fits loosely over the top of the jar but can still fit the ring on. 

Add about a tablespoon of seeds (give or take) to the bottom of the jar and add a couple of tablespoons of cold water to it.  You will also need a sieve of some type - something that you can rinse the seeds with  without them going down the drain.

Dump the seeds into your sieve and rinse under cold water for a few seconds.  The jug behind is one of my plant watering jugs that I refill as I'm rinsing so I'm not wasting water while rinsing seeds!

Dump the rinsed seeds back into the jar and add a couple tablespoons of cold water to the jar.  This is the soak.  You will only soak once on each batch of seed.

Should look about like this.  It doesn't look like much, but resist adding more seeds to the jar.  They make a big pile when they sprout and grow!

Put the napkin or sprout lid on the jar and loosely spin the ring on - like above.  You can use cheese cloth or other loose weave fabric for this as well.  It just has to breathe.  Set the jar in a cool place that is shaded - not in direct sunlight and leave for 8-12 (24 max) hours.

After the soak hours, rinse the seeds again in the cold water, dump back in the jar - you can see above how these have started puffing up a bit - ready to be delicious!

Repeat this rinse and drain process every day until you have a jar full of yummy sprouts! I often use about a quarter of them at a time and start my next jars of sprouts so I always have something.  Sprouting times differ depending on what seeds you are using - just like growing in the garden - radish and alfalfa are fast and the beans are slower.

You can see in the above picture that some of them are starting to sprout! This is day 3 of this batch. Keep rinsing, draining and checking them - should take about a week to get to edible salad sprouts (for alfalfa).

Couple of things to remember - if you forget for one day to rinse your sprouts - all good just continue as usual.  If you forget two days you might be ok - if the jar has a terrible smell though you have to start over!  If the water in the jar is milky looking, but doesn't smell  you are good to go - some of the seeds leach some starch into the water as they grow so it will turn the water milky.

There are also some great Youtube and instructional videos on this that you can look for and watch for more information.  SproutPeople has great information and products and there are also great kits you can order with seeds you might want to sprout also.  My seeds came from our local store All About Herbs and from Mountain Rose Herbs.  I think they both have the seed sprouting kits that you can get as well.

I hope that Spring is close for you, or that you can sprout some, and that you all are well and happy!

Blessed Be!