Sprouts - Grow Your Own!

Seeds that I sprout and grow at home have become a large part of my daily diet.  Though it took me a while to learn how to fit them into my diet in a way that worked for me, once I figured that out they became a health-changing staple.
Yes - I can buy sprouts at the store and do in a pinch.  There are several good reasons, though, to grow them at home.  Often the sprouts on the store shelves at places like Sprouts, Whole Foods and Central Market don't look or smell all that fresh.  Containers of Brocco and similar sprouts sometimes look great on the store shelves, but other times they have brown roots, look slimy and smell moldy.  The second reason is that buying sprouts at the store is expensive,  and especially expensive if you're making them a dietary staple.  The third reason is that they're easy to grow at home, with minimal or even no investment other than the cost of the seeds.  A little seed goes a long way.  One cup of seed provides me with enough sprouts for a whole week's worth of green drinks, brown drinks (smoothies), salad and sandwich toppings.
Sprouting seeds, nuts and beans greatly enhances their nutritional value.  When oats are sprouted, for example, the vitamin B2 content increases by 1,300%, vitamin B6 by 500%, and folic acid by 600%.  Sprouts contain extraordinarily high levels of high quality protein.  As just one example, mung bean sprouts contain a higher proportion of their calories as protein than a T-bone steak.
I soak and sprout all kinds of seeds, nuts and beans, but my focus is on small vegetable seeds - things like broccoli, alfalfa, arugula, mustard, kale, onion and fenugreek.  Broccoli sprouts are perhaps my favorite, simply because they are crazy nutritious.  They aren't a substitute for adult broccoli - you should eat that too - but an ounce of broccoli sprouts contains as much sulforophane (supports antioxidant activity) as a pound and a quarter of cooked adult broccoli.  One ounce also contains 15% of the recommended daily amount of vitamin C, and is loaded with fiber and calcium.
I sprout seed blends - a little of this and a little of that - and eat between eight ounces and a pound of sprouts a day.  Vegetable sprouts are most often eaten raw.  Nut sprouts are also mostly eaten raw, and can easily be blended with water to become milks.  Bean & legume sprouts are sometimes eaten raw and sometimes cooked, but I like to cook them.
Here are some basics.  As I said, it's simple.  All you need is seeds, water, a soaking/sprouting container, and a tray of some kind to grow the sprouts in.
I buy organic seeds in bulk online and keep them in airtight containers.  You might be able to find them in some local stores, but check the freshness dates. Seeds and supplies are readily available online at sprouthouse.com, wheatgrasskits.com, sproutpeople.com and sprouting.com and others.

Above are alfalfa, broccoli and mustard seeds and one of the sprouters I like to use.  I'll start with 1/4 cup each of broccoli and alfalfa seeds, add a tablespoon of mustard or some other spicy seed, and combine them with lukewarm water in my easysprout container.

Another easy way to sprout seeds is with a sprouting bag, which is sometimes also known as a nutmilk bag.  I have sprouting bags that I've used dozens of times, and they always seem to do the job.

Here's some newly sprouted seeds, after about one day of germination.  First I combined the seeds with lukewarm water.  I let the seeds soak for eight hours and then rinsed and drained them.  Then, I let the drained seeds sit in the same container for germination.  At this stage, once fully germinated, I transfer them directly to a sprouting tray and let nature take its course.

Two days later the crop is doing well.  The trays I use are a double tray system.  The top tray has some holes in it for easy rinsing and draining of the seeds as they grow.  Seeds/sprouts like to be rinsed a lot - at least once a day while growing.  After rinsing them in the perforated top tray I put them in a solid bottom tray.  BUT, you don't need a fancy double tray covered system to grow great sprouts.  I used whatever basic plastic trays I could find around the house for several years before investing in better equipment.  The cover is also optional.  I started covering my trays this winter.  It seems to make the sprouts grow a bit faster, but other than that there's no difference.

The end result is nutritious great-tasting sprouts.  From seed to fully-grown sprouts takes about five days.  I start new seeds about every other day, though I mix it up.  Sometimes I might be sprouting small vegetable seeds like this, other times beans or grains.  The process for soaking and germinating grain to grow your own wheatgrass is very similar.  The only difference is that once you've soaked and germinated the wheat, you put the wheat sprouts on a tray of dirt to grow into wheatgrass.  That's a great thing to eat too, but deserves its own blog post.
The seed/nut/legume soaking times are sort of important, plus/minus a couple of hours.  Most small vegetable seeds are soaked six to eight hours.  Most hulled seeds like almonds, pumpkin and sunflower are soaked about eight hours.  Beans and legumes are soaked a bit longer, maybe ten to twelve hours on average.
Soak for a few hours, germinate for a day or so, and then sprout and green for a few days.  Don't keep them in the dark.  That's about all you need to know to Grow Your Own.