A little while back I started seeing a couple of videos on YouTube
about growing sprouts and a jar. I thought it was a silly idea but I
gave it a try with some broccoli seeds that I had.
I had grown the broccoli seeds or other broccoli seeds in a little pan
of dirt and harvested the sprouts from that after about 10 days and
that was fun. I added to my morning eggs but just throwing them in a
jar and rinsing them twice a day just didn't sound like it would work.
The first try failed. I used broccoli seeds that were supposed to go
in the dirt. Apparently there are differences between dirt seeds and
sprouting seeds. I still haven't figured out exactly what the
differences are but I'm learning.
I bought some alfalfa sprouting seeds off of Amazon and tried them. I
put two teaspoons or tablespoons in a mason jar and did the little
straining thing and kept them upside down so they would drain after I
rinsed them.
I had way too many sprouts in that jar. They tasted good but the last
bits were slimy and not good. I cut it back to one tablespoon in a
mason jar and that actually did a lot better. After a few rounds of
doing that I ordered some broccoli sprouting seeds and the first batch
of that was very small.
Apparently I need two tablespoons of broccoli seeds where one
tablespoon of alfalfa seeds worked just fine. So now I'm at a point
where I have three jars going and I ate sprouts in my eggs this
morning.
My goal with this is to have nutrient rich foods added into my diet
with very little work. I could buy them but it's satisfying to
actually grow some for myself and it fits with what I'm trying to
learn because I've tried to grow vegetables on the deck for two or
three years.
I get a few but it's just not enough to sustain. So far my conclusion
is that I need a lot more going to sustain even just one person let
alone two people having a salad a couple of times a week. I had a
friend at work that started a whole business based on growing lettuce
using hydroponics and then keeping fish in the water so that they
would poop and add to the nutrients in the water to help the lettuce
grow.
He and his family built an entire building and set up a whole
hydroponic system and he did that going into retirement. It was always
fun to think about but I don't know that I could ever scale up to that
level.
But I am thinking about scaling up my hydroponics to where I'm doing
it outside on the deck using rain gutters or something else. It's a
fun little project and it gives me something to work on and think
about and then eat.
