Winter Sprouts

Inspired by a facebook post by Vertical Veg, I levered myself from a chair and began to gather materials for my own sprouting operations.  It started out slow with seeds leftover from sundry, alternate projects, but picked up speed yesterday when I purchased a couple packets of sprouting seed from Green Acres Market.  (Btw, Green Acres has a fairly good selection of healthy alternatives, but it's impossible to buy there without bringing home a load of plastic packaging.  Ick!)

Whether indoors or out, I am besotted with pea seedlings, so I have been snapshotting the darlings each day.  They're so cute that I have to share my sequence starting Dec. 12.  The last photo is from this morning, Dec. 17.

I also tried some black-eyed peas that were so old that I had lost the date.  Those I tried to sprout, not grow in a tray of dirt.  They never germinated and began to smell funky despite washing repeatedly, so I tossed them to the chickens who relished them!  Next, I tried some winter wheat, which Vertical Veg suggested I sprout (as opposed to growing as shoots/greens).  It has been a couple days of washing without signs of germination, but that was pretty old seed, too.  As of yesterday, I have a flat of sunflower seeds purchased from Green Acres now soaking on a bed of soil like the peas in these pictures.  Alternately, I set up the sunflower seeds to sprout in a jar.  The remaining project is a similar jar of mixed seeds with which I also hope to produce sprouts.

When I work all this out, I will scale up.  The idea is to supplement greens (spinach, lettuce, cilantro, parsley, and the sweetest, fattest, little radishes one ever saw) from the coldhouse in order to produce more colorful, textured and flavorful winter salads all with my own home grown salad goods!