Easy Sprouting For Healthy Eating and Fun!

Step 4 Rinsing, Sunlight, Eating!

After the immersion, you'll begin to see little sprouts popping up within a few hours of the first rinse. You should rinse (and drain) your sprouts 2 or 3 times per day. They should never be left in water after the initial soaking, as the roots need to breathe. The tea from the initial soak will be greenish-brown and is awesome fertilizer for your garden or flower bed.

Alfalfa takes about four days to mature and be ready to harvest. The lentils are usually ready in about that time as well. The 3-part salad mix takes about six days, with at least two full days of sunlight for best results. The lentils need the least amount of light of the three shown here.

So there you have it. A (more or less) complete do-it-yourself walkthrough of sprouting. Lentils make great salad toppers, to ad a little crunch, and alfalfa and garden mixes are awesome alone, on salad, on sandwiches, etc. Enjoy!

Comments

[san_how]

thanks, now I know why I've only been successful with alfalfa. I left out the initial soaking. Apparently alfalfa are small enough. I tried chia seeds, but ended up with a gummy non-growing clump. I bought the seeds for fiber, rather than specifically for growing. Could they have been dead?

[Aaronicus]

Ya, that first 6-8 hours of soak is usually what penetrates the seed pod and activates the seed's growing process. Alfalfa is thin enough that it might begin sprouting without the soak, but your yield will be much higher if you do soak. Chia seeds are not guaranteed for a reason. I don't think anyone who's owned a Chia has ever had better than a 70% sprout success. The seal on the bag they come in is absolute, so Chia seeds often die before being purchased.

[XxZombiexX]

Also I recently learned from a co-worker that the Chia "gummy non-growing clump" is becoming a trend to use in dieting so you are in effect only eating half the food consumed.  (eg, adding a quarter chia gel to cake mix, thereby decreasing total "caloric mass")

[TeachNdahood]

Wow this is fantastic , I've been eating alfalfa sprouts like crazy here lately can't get enough of them, neither can my toddler. Thank you so much for the walkthrough I didn't realize you could grow your own will save me in the long run. Thanks again!

[Aaronicus]

You're very welcome. Ya, I did an informal price check at the store. This growing kit was $25 and the seeds are about $6/pound (a pound goes a LONG way).

Given the price of sprouts at the store (organic), at our rate of growth and consumption, we recouped the cost of the whole setup in less than a month.

Currently, our sprouting is on the decline (doing more lentils and now trying onions, foregoing alfalfa and the salad mix) because our early spinach and young lettuce are at clipping size in our garden. :)

I'm slowly but surely doing an organic gardening how-to on my website at http://www.AaronsEnvironMental.com and just published my adventures building a raised bed garden box today.

Thanks again for the comment and let me know if you have any questions!