Soil Sprouting - Take 2! Lessons Learned :)

start soaking

During the first round of soil sprouting wheatgrass, pea shoots, and sunflower seeds, I learned that soaking 2 cups of pea shoot seeds quickly fills up a one quart jar!  I also learned that it's not all that easy to find the next size up, 1/2 gallon, jars.  I found some online www.amazon.com
When they arrived, I started soaking round two of soil sprouting seeds!


finish soaking

The top photo on the right shows three 1/2 gallon jars next to a one quart jar.  The top photo is the start of soaking 2 cups each of seeds and water filled to 4 cup mark.  The next photo down is after 8+ hours of soaking.  Going from left to right, the sunflower seeds are still floating!  I tried stirring and mixing but just can't get them to sink.  The next smaller quart jar has only 1/2 cup of mung bean seeds and 2 cups water.  The next larger jar is wheatgrass and the furthest right jar is pea shoot seeds.  I can see that next time the pea shoots need more water than the 4 cup mark.  Next time I'll go up to the 5 cup mark.  The HUGE lesson I learned about mung bean sprouts is that a little goes a long way!  I ended up throwing out the first batch.  The volume of growth got out of hand and air flow was poor (see previous blog Mung bean sproutings are taking over!).  The sprouts started going bad.  Oh well, live and learn!!!



seeds onto soil

During the first round of soil sprouting I went a little too long on soaking and rinsing times...  The seeds had really started sprouting before I got them onto the soil and they were pretty tangled.
So, for this second round, I soaked the seeds 11 hours and then kept them in the rinse phase for 17 hours.

The trays are now up on the shelving unit with weighted cover on sunflower sprouts and unweighted cover on pea and wheatgrass for the next 3 days...

Stay tuned for more lessons learned and organization techniques to come in subsequent blogs...