sprouting seeds**to eat**

annie-c

Glad this thread has been ressurected. I am 4 days into sprouting mung beans. They have grown well and none are brown, but whilst most are greenish white, some of the bean-parts seem reddish in colour - is this normal??

Kazonline

The odd one of mine is too Annie-c. At what point are they 'ready'? I've read so much I'm struggling to hold onto all the info!
I'm assuming also that I should be throwing away the seed 'skins' as they seperate - is this right? It's a bit like when I had my kefir at the start - keep wanting to 'tend' to it, lol.
Kaz x
PS it's butter making for me next!!!

npsmama

Can I use broccoli seeds I bouight at the garden centre?

Kazonline

sorry npsmama, I've no idea. I'm guessing mine are due to be eaten - they're sprouting leaves now.
Kaz x

Bananaz_2

So many posts here! Nice to see this topic being discussed on this forum

Just a few things related to the multitude of earlier posts..:



To make mung bean sprouts grow more vigourously, you need to grow them under physical pressure. This might sound strange, but I can assure you it is the truth. I don't mean atmospheric pressure, I mean weight - you could try placing a grid of fairly heavy-guage wire mesh over the growing sprouts, so as to avoid hindering the watering and respiration of the sprouts.


For an excellent automated sprouting system (*MUCH* cheaper than the oft-touted 'market-leader'), I recommend all of you take a look at what Val has to offer, on her website EatSprouts.com

She offers DIY (or ready-assembled, if you prefer to pay the premium)) sprouter kits which can run off the mains water supply (or can be pump-fed, from a static tank, at your own discretion). Using these kits, one's sprouts can be misted& oxygenated at any time of day, and up to 8 times per day, for a duration of your choosing (an advanced digital sprinkler timer is used).

I own several of these kits and I find them excellent. They are particularly cost-effective if you need to automate the production of wheatgrass, since few people can afford the time or inconvenience to manually water trays throughout the day. In comparison to the stratospheric (and wholly-unjustified, IMHO) cost of several EasyGreen units, the DIY kits are dramatically cheaper (you need a fair bit of square-inch area per tray in order to churn out decent quantities of wheatgrass juice - about 14sq" per Oz of juice, although this varies depending on how healthy and vigourous your wheatgrass is).

Lastly, don't forget that if you like to grow wheatgrass (I appreciate that many of you are interested only in growing standard seed and bean sprouts), it is worth bearing in mind that it is capable of utilising over 90 minerals, and an excellent way of providing these nutrients to it, during the growing cycle, is to spray with OceanGrown sea-mineral hydroponic growing solution. Liquid kelp is another, lower-grade, but still excellent option. In fact, it is worth spraying virtually any type of sprout with a little liquid kelp before it reaches maturity. Make sure you buy organic liquid kelp, free of additives, and remember that, where hydroponic fertilisation is concerned, 'less is more'.

otterspasm wrote:

Was wondering if anyone has ever sprouted linseeds/flax seeds?
Can they be done?
Any special requirements?

Cheers!

There are a couple of options worth trying, owing to the problematic mucilaginous properties of flax seeds (in other words, their tendency to exude a slimy jelly-like substance when wet). To obtain a successful sprout despite this tendency, you can mix in a few flax seeds with other types of seeds (make sure they are seeds that take the same amount of time to grow to sprout maturity!), which means that the other types of sprouts prevent you from having an entire tray of jelly. Another method is to immerse a piece of terracotta in water almost completely, but leave, say, 5mm proud of the water, and you will find that this will keep the top surface of the terracotta moist. The flax seeds can be sprouted on this moist surface without becoming overly jelly-like. You need to keep topping up the reservoir to avoid the terracotta drying out. An easy way to do this is to drill holes in the reservoir container so that the water cannot go any higher than desired - if it does, it'll just spill out of the holes. In this way, you can just replenish the reservoir very easily and the water will find it's own level, appropriate to the height of the terracotta.

As an aside, for anyone experimenting with sprouting the various beans available in the supermarket, please be aware that you should not attempt to sprout kidney beans!. They are toxic in the raw state, even when sprouted.


Personally, I would not recommend the Freshlife sprouter because it re-uses water that has already been drained from the sprouts - this means it is full of growth inhibitors and the like, which were rinsed off to some extent in the beginning stages of the growth cycle.

Val's kits are much better value, do not re-use dirty water, give you a great deal of growing space, and allow you to expand very economically as your needs increase (e.g. for wheatgrass trays). One of the greatest healing elements in sprouts is the chlorophyll ('plant blood') which is so incredibly cleansing to the human body and is unbelievably similar to human blood - only one molecule differs - magnesium vs. iron. To gain maximum chlorophyll benefit from your sprouting endeavours (and, in the process, to save a huge amount of money if you currently buy a lot of supermarket salad greens) you need to consider growing baby salad greens such as more-mature pea shoots, sunflower sprouts, and buckwheat sprouts. These require a 10-day growing cycle, and this, as with wheatgrass, is where an automated sprouting setup with a large capacity really comes into it's own. So, by all means, start small, with a hemp sprouting bag or a sprouting jar, but if you find you are keen to increase both the ease and the scale of sprout production, think very carefully about your options before spending money on an automated system. The Freshlife and the Easygreen represent extremely poor value when applied to larger scale sprouting, in my opinion, although they may be adequate for people wanting only enough sprouts to fill a sandwich or two daily.

npsmama wrote:

Can I use broccoli seeds I bouight at the garden centre?

Yes, you can.


B.

Kazonline

I Found that using a jar was far too small for my needs and rummaged in my cupboards and remembered a friend telling me she used her Tupperware oval server for cress. I have three of these so put one into action - and it's fantastic!!
It makes soaking, draining and rinsing a real doddle - and now I have enough beansprouts to make a stir fry for the family in one go!
It's not really as suitable for alfala though as those seeds are incredibly tiny and would slip through the 'colander' part - but perhaps once they've began sprouting and so are larger it might work.
Anyway, just wanted to share that in case another sprouting seed lover has an oval server lurking in the cupboard!
Kaz x

redissue

Can anybody offer advice on how to clean off the sprouts when they are ready to munch? There are always loads of the hulls / ungerminated seeds, and so on stuck in amongst the sprouts, and soaking them doesn't really clean them off properly.

Bananaz_2

redissue wrote:

Can anybody offer advice on how to clean off the sprouts when they are ready to munch? There are always loads of the hulls / ungerminated seeds, and so on stuck in amongst the sprouts, and soaking them doesn't really clean them off properly.

Provided you have a good root system, connecting all the individual sprouts to one another, you can simply hold all the sprouts upside down and dangle them into a bowl of water, swishing them around. In this manner, the unnecessary hulls should easily fall away into the water.

angel

I've just bought my first sprouter! It'a a three tier one and was only £6 from the local heath food store. I started it yesterday and already the mung beans and alfalfa seeds are starting to show little roots. I can't wait!

tim_n

Just went to H&B to find that someone had bought not one but all 10 packets on the shelf! (insert shrieking head here)

Won't get any till next week now :- (