Getting to Health: Sprouts & Microgreens

Sprouts and Microgreens are another great way to increase the variety of different plant-based foods in your diet and they are easy to grow at home. They are very nutritious and, depending on what plants you grow, they can be tangy, nutty, hot or even sweet. You can add them to salads, sandwiches, stir fries and sprinkle them on anything you like.

Some of the most popular options include bean and pea sprouts, sprouted grains, and sprouts from vegetables, nuts, and other seeds. In general, any plant which you would eat the stems and leaves from is a good option for sprouting. Plants where you only eat the fruits (such as tomatoes and peppers) aren’t appropriate.

You can buy seeds for both sprouts and microgreens from many different places. While the seeds are essentially the same as you would buy for growing in your garden, it is important to only use seeds specifically intended for sprouting as they are chemical-free and cleaned so that they’re pathogen-free.

Sprouts are newly germinated seeds and you eat the whole thing: seed and the newly formed sprout.

There are many different ways of growing sprouts in your kitchen, the simplest of which is to put them in a wide mouthed jar with some cheesecloth over the top. You can also find metal lids with mesh inserts that are a bit more manageable. GoodLife sprouting jars have a great lid version that allow you to easily drain the water by flipping the jar upside down and leave it to stand in the sink or on the counter.

You put 1-2 tablespoons of sprouts in the jar, fill with water and leave to soak for a few hours. Then drain the water and rinse them twice-daily, giving them a good shake in the jar to encourage air flow. This is really good for mung beans and they are basically ready when they fill the jar.

Another option is a Sprout Propagator that has a series of trays so that you can stagger your sprouts to have a continuous supply. You can also put different seed types on the different levels. You don’t want to mix them up because they may sprout at different speeds. The top and bottom trays are for water: you fill the top tray and the water gradually trickles down through the drainage holes in each tray to the bottom. Grooves in the seed trays hold a bit of moisture for the seeds but keep them from getting waterlogged. The process is very similar: put a tablespoon or two of seeds in the tray(s) and add the water. Twice a day empty the bottom tray and add fresh water to the top.

Microgreens are tiny, edible baby vegetable seedlings harvested just after the first true leaves form with a pair of scissors. They are not sprouts and they are not shoots. Microgreens are actually regular vegetables or herbs, harvested as tiny seedlings, before the plant fully matures. You don’t need soil to grow them.

For their size, microgreens pack an enormous punch when it comes to nutrients. Research has shown that the microgreens contain a higher concentration of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants than the mature vegetables of the same variety. Incorporating a small handful of these tiny greens into your daily diet is a brilliant and easy way to boost your intake of essential nutrients.

An easy way to get started with growing microgreens is using a Micropod growing kit. These come in 2 different sizes with handy seed mats with the seeds nicely spaced in them already. The seed mats come either as single varieties or in mixes where they grow at the same rate.

If you want a continuous supply, you can use several of the containers. It is possible to stagger the mats in the double-mat container but you have to cover one side while the new seeds are germinating.

This approach is certainly very simple and foolproof but it is more expensive.

I’ve also tried a Microgreens Growing Tray where you place the seeds on tissue and spray them daily with water until roots start to form and then fill the tray below with water. No soil required – just spray the seeds with water until roots develop, then keep water reservoir topped up with fresh water until harvest a couple of weeks later! It was okay but if the tissue overlaps the edges at all it can wick the water out of the container.

 

I’m currently experimenting with using the Micropod container with fibre mats and sprinkling my own seeds on them. You could do the same on the Growing Tray or in a flat glass food storage container but most seeds germinate better in the dark so you would need to cover them or put them in something.