This is to be the first entry in the “Grow Your Own Food” series I’m working on. Amongst the foods I plan to include for the Autumn/Winter series are sprouts, radish, spinach, cabbage, beets, rutabaga, kohlrabi, fennel, carrots, and potatoes. Sprouts without a doubt are the easiest, and quickest, of these foods to grow — they take such little effort; the hardest thing about growing them is remembering to rinse them twice a day!
The goal of this series, or one of the goals anyway, is to demonstrate how easy it is to grow your own food. I think that we tend to have this notion that gardening/growing our food is super difficult, tedious, and time-consuming, but it’s not. Really, I promise, it’s not. The hardest part is digging your garden and preparing your soil, but you can just set aside one afternoon and it’s done in a few hours. After that it’s just planting the seeds, watering, and a little other occasional maintenance. Or, there are many foods that can be grown in a simple planter box — radish, spinach, arugula, anything with a shallow root system — all you need is a planter, a bag of soil, some seeds, and voila — you’re done! I plan to demonstrate this technique when I grow spinach in a few weeks…
Our winter garden — look how big the radishes are already just a couple of weeks after planting:
Sprouts however, require very little, and can easily and quickly be grown in your kitchen. I must credit my wonderful mother-in-law, Sue, for giving me the idea to grow them — I would have surely overlooked them otherwise.
Sprouts are an excellent source of vitamins and minerals, many of them containing large quantities of vitamin A especially. A number of seeds, pulses, legumes, and grains can be sprouted, such as mung beans, quinoa, alfalfa, radish, cabbage, mustard, adzuki, fenugreek, lentils, chickpeas, soy beans, wheat, rye, sunflower, and green peas. Experiment! For this entry I used alfalfa and mung beans.
What You Will Need:
– Seeds, beans, whatever you want to sprout — about 2 Tbsp. usually yields around 4 cups of sprouts, but this varies according to what you are using*
– A clean mason jar, or other glass quart container
– Cheesecloth
– Rubberbands
– A source of clean water
– A strainer
*Most health food stores will have the seeds to start sprouts, and you can also cheaply purchase pulses and other legumes from the dry bulk section of these stores. For instance, I think that mung beans generally run about $2-3 per lb. and 1/4 c. of these will produce about 3 quarts of sprouts….Or you can simply buy lentils or quinoa, or even cheaper and easier; buy packets of radish, celery, or cabbage seeds from your local nursery or hardware store.
Directions:
1. Place the seeds into your container and cover with warm water. Soak overnight (6-8 hours)
2. Rinse the seeds with lukewarm water, then return to cleaned containers
3. Cover jars with cheesecloth secured well with a rubberband
4. Seeds will need to be rinsed 2-3 times a day. I did this once in the morning while I was making my coffee, and once just before going to bed. Simply fill your jars with lukewarm water, let sit for a minute or two, lightly shake your jars, and turn upside-down to drain
*I found it helpful to leave jars over drinking glasses to allow them to drain completely, and then once drained, left them on their sides so as to not become waterlogged
Mung beans on Morning # 1 — already starting to sprout!
Morning #4:
5. Most sprouts take 3-7 days to mature. Sprouts are best grown in a warm (70-80 degrees F) place with little light. On the third day, however, you will want to expose most varieties of sprout to some natural light, so that they can increase their chlorophyll content.
6. Place mature sprouts in a water-filled container and rinse to remove hulls (seed coverings) and fibrous roots. The hulls will float to the top — skim them off, then strain sprouts and allow to drain dry.
7. Sprouts are best used immediately upon maturation, but will keep in a covered glass or plastic container in the refrigerator for 3-4 days.
Black bean and red wheatberry burger with tomato and alfalfa sprouts. Oh yeah.
“Sprouts are very nutritious because they contain all elements a plant needs for life and growth. The endosperm of the seed is the storehouse of carbohydrates, protein, and oil. When the seed germinates, these become predigested amino acids and natural sugars upon which the plant embryo feeds as it grows to maturity. When used as food, the life force is released and supplies the energy which is capable of generating healthy cells in the body and supplying us with new vigor and life. Used as an adjunct to the diet, sprouts can retard the aging process, since they contain ample amounts of male and female hormones, available in their most assimilable form. Processed foods often lack the vitamins and minerals necessary to a balanced diet. Research shows that, in sprouts, one finds one of the foods highest in vitamin and mineral content. Sprouts should, therefore, occupy a prominent place in the diet. Among their other virtues is the fact that the seeds are low in cost, can be stored indefinitely, and are easy to grow, and, when sprouted, increase their nutritional value many times.” — from http://www.rosicrucian.com
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