Sprouting Seeds for Salad etc.

I was cleaning out the top shelf of the pantry a week or so ago and came across my seed sprouter, still in its box, covered with dust. It must have been sitting up there for years because I can't remember the last time I used it.

Sprouter

Sitting next to it was a heavy brown mailing envelope with three big bags of seeds for sprouting - cress, wheat and mung beans.  The sprouter and the seeds had come from Johnny's Selected Seeds but the packages had no dates.

Just for the heck of it I set up the sprouter and filled it with seeds. Every morning and evening I filled the top reservoir with water and let it trickle down through the three layers of seeds to the bottom reservoir.  Then I emptied the bottom tray and set the sprouter in a north facing window. The instructions said I'd have sprouts in three to five days.

Pea Sprouts

After ten days and no sprouts from any of the seeds I threw the whole mess away and thoroughly washed out the smelly sprouter.  Those seeds must have been seven or eight years old.

All this cold dreary weather has made me long for green things, so I rummaged through my left over garden seeds and set up the sprouter with peas (the bottom layer) kale and broccoli.  I had plenty of left over kale seeds but not much broccoli, so they are on the top layer.

That was Monday morning. This morning is Thursday and I have little bits of sprouts from all three seeds!  I'm thinking I will pot up the pea sprouts in peat pots to have ready for the garden - though I doubt the ground will be warm enough to plant them out on St. Patrick's day - we shall see.

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Kale sprouts

The kale and broccoli have a long way to go before they are edible, but since kale grows so quickly in the garden I'm thinking I'll have kale sprouts by this time next week. 

The broccoli will be a much smaller harvest as there were not more than 50 seeds among all the packages I had left over from the last couple of years. Still, its nice to know that broccoli seeds are long keepers.