Soil Sprouts Success

Broccoli and radish soil sprouts

In a previous post I mentioned one of my winter-time growing experiments, soil sprouts: seeds that are sprouted in containers in the dark, moved to the sun, and allowed to grow just short of the micro green stage. I learned about the idea from the book, Year-Round  Indoor Salad Gardening, by Peter Burke. I purchased seeds for red Russian kale, purple stem radish, alfalfa, broccoli, and black stripe sunflowers from Todd's Seeds. This process doesn't require as much maintenance as sprouting seeds soil-lessly in jars (no rinsing multiple times per day) and the soil sprouts are ready much sooner than micro greens. 

So far:  success.  Each day for about a week, I filled an old plastic coffee can with damp potting soil, covered the surface with one of the types of seeds I had purchased, covered the top with moistened newspaper, and placed the can in a cardboard box large enough to hold five cans.  Each day I checked the containers already in the box and sprayed with water to re-moisten the seeds and newspaper coverings.  After a few days, the first can of seeds had sprouted.  I let them grow for another day or two until the sprouts were about an inch tall and then I moved the can to a spot in our sun room that has filtered sunlight.  I figured that direct sun at our elevation would be too intense. 

As each can was ready, I moved it into the light and replaced it with another can of seeds in the box. 

Now, I have four cans of seeds, two of which are ready to eat.  I have more seeds in the box on their way to sprouting.  The most recent batch I started was sunflower seeds.  I soaked those in a wet paper towel over night first since they might need a little boost to germinate. 

I'm really enjoying the sight of a window sill covered with the vivid green of fresh, growing things in February. 

Soil sprouts line up