Sprouting or I'm not a hippy, honest.

I've been so busy with work the last two weeks I've been praying for the apocalypse just so I can spend some time at home in the garden. The original first sentence to this article is still included below, but no longer applies as the great British weather has finally delivered summer!

My first article was going to be one in a series of growing food in a small (sub)urban garden. Sadly however the current cold snap in London means everything in my garden has stopped growing and I'm playing the fun game of hoping it doesn't all die.

So instead I'll talk about something else.

In the event of even a minor crisis in the UK one of the first things to suffer will be supermarket stocks, particularly of fresh food and veg. Even very minor things like the snow this winter or the fuel protests a few years back can interrupt the 'just in time' delivery of most large stores. As I've already pointed out above, growing your own food is often affected by seasons and the sheer time involved makes it impractical to start planting when a crisis kicks off. So how can you quickly, easily and cheaply generate fresh vitamin packed food any time of the year?

Sprouting, normally considered to be the preserve of hairy hippies, is quick and easy to do and the result is reasonable nutritious and vitamin rich. It might not beat fresh fruit and veg but its better than nothing. Sprouting as defined by Wikipedia is "the practice of soaking, draining and then rinsing seeds at regular intervals until they germinate, or sprout." Essentially this is all you need to know.

Two of the most common (and easiest) sprouts are Alfalfa and Mung beans which I'll cover below. For the home sprouter you basically need a container that will hold water and that's easy to drain. A glass jar with a muslin/cloth lid or a basic tiered system (pictured) will do the job nicely and both can easily be acquired/made with a little forethought.



So for Alfalfa spread out enough seeds to roughly cover the sprouting container bottom or if using a jar maybe half a centimetre or so at the bottom. Cover in water and leave overnight. Mung beans also need to be soaked over night, but take it from me, you want a lot fewer than you think, unless you intend to use a lot quickly. My first batch went from tasty looking juicy sprouts to compost without ever reaching my mouth.

alfalfa (left) and mung beans.


So once soaked overnight (or 8-12 hours ish) spread out on the grid of the sprouter, rinse and allow to drain well. Or if using a jar rinse and drain very well. You don't really want too much moisture as this can cause fungus, mold or just rotten sprouts. Again I speak from experience here!

Repeat the rinsing process every 8-12 hours. I do it once in the morning and once at night and that seems sufficient. Recommended wisdom seems to be that the seeds shouldn't be moved too much, but I've blasted mine with streams of water and its never seemingly made a difference.

Alfalfa requires some light, but again I've never found 'normal' ambient room to be a problem. Mung beans are supposed to grow in the dark and produce whiter crisper sprouts but I've not tried.

So keep rinsing and after about 5 days you should have something worth eating. Rinse a final time and either cook (mung beans good in stir fry) or add to a sandwich (tuna and alfalfa works for me).




Simply, fairly nutritious, cheap and easy... so what's the down side?

Water. Sprouting by its very nature requires quite a lot of potable water, you can probably play around with misters and such to cut this down, but certainly water will be required and it will need to be clean and fresh. Anything you wouldn't drink should be avoided for obvious reasons.*

*Read what happens when you eat lettuce in countries with a contaminated water supply.