Monday, April 26, 2010

Sprouts!


Every night at supper we try and have a salad with our meal. One of the things I love to put on my salad is Alfalfa Sprouts. The grocery stores charge $5 for a small box of the tasty little things and that is the reason why I have not had any in a long time.

I decided to heck with them and just grow my own. Here's how to do it.

Buy a pound of Alfalfa seeds at a health food store for $15 dollars. Then soak 2 tablespoons of seeds in a qt mason jar half full of water for about eight hours. Then cover it with cheese cloth and rinsed the seeds a couple of times. Drain as much water as you can out of the jar leaving the cheese cloth on, then lay it on its side and roll it. The seeds will stick to the side of the jar. Try not to let the seeds ball up. Then place the jar away from the sunlight in a cool place. You should see them start to sprout in a day or so. You will need to rinse the seeds/sprouts twice a day to keep them moist and to keep any fungus from growing. When the jar gets full, just take the sprouts out, rinse well, let dry, then place them in a container in the icebox. They should last for a couple of weeks. In that time a new batch will be ready.
The pic is of sprouts only 3 days old.

The yield of one pound of seeds = 80 +/- tablespoons
Total cost of sprouts if bought from a store = $200.00
Total cost of home grown = $15.00

1 comment:

  1. Dang! That's a cool idea.
    Talk about mini-farming. You're saving some bucks with micro-alphalpha!

    ReplyDelete