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Since I’ve know Jeff, he’s been excited about sprouts. His enthusiasm is contagious and it rubbed off on me.  Now I’m pretty excited about sprouts too. If you’ve visited us at market lately and asked us ‘what’s new?’, I may have told you Sprouts!
I’ll back up. We’ve made sprouts near our sink in glass jars here and there. We’d be excited, but doing it on a regular basis never stuck. We’d forget to rinse them often enough or sometimes we’d be running errands and come home to find them dried out. For one reason or another- it just didn’t really work out. Jeff told me (many times over the years) that he wanted to eat a bowl full of sprouts a day. He also told me he wanted to build a sprouting machine that would automatically water sprouts for us. I had never heard of such a thing and honestly, it sounded complicated to me. I thought: ‘Why do we need a sprouting machine? All we need is a glass jar.’ But like I said, that didn’t happen as much as we would have liked and certainly not enough to provide a bowl a day!

Why Sprouts?

What is so great about sprouts? Enzymes. Mega Nutrients. Life Force. To name just a few things. I remember reading about the importance of raw foods in ‘Nourishing Traditions’, including fermented foods and sprouts. A few quotes about sprouts from the book:

“The process of germination not only produces vitamin C but also changes the composition of grains and seeds in numerous beneficial ways. Sprouting increases vitamin C content, especially B2, B5, and B6. Carotene increases dramatically- sometimes eightfold. 
 …sprouting also neutralizes the enzyme inhibitors present in all seeds.”

“The sprouting of seeds is one of the most fascinating natural phenomena. From this minuscule appendage, tiny part of a seed even tinier, is born the plant. That this sprout has exceptional nutritional value is not surprising. But even more remarkable is the ability of this sprout to produce a whole range of substances- principally vitamins and enzymes- that are completely absent, or present only in extremely small amounts, in the unsprouted seed. The seed becomes hardly recognizable and transforms itself into something new, which is less energetic but richer in nutrients.” -Claude Aubert 

Recently, while reading ‘Fresh Food From Small Spaces’, my interest in sprouts was renewed. That book inspired me in quite a few ways, but one of the major inspirations I came away with was to get into sprouts again. If you want to produce more of your own food with limited space, sprouts are the way to go!
Here are some quotes about sprouts from the book:

“Quite simply, it allows me to produce armloads of fresh food every week, from pennies’ worth of seed, using just one or two square feet of space that does not need to be well lighted. No other food production system can claim this.”

“Sprouts retain the nutrition from their seeds and create much more. Radish sprouts contain 29 times more vitamin C than milk, 10 times more calcium than a potato, and more vitamin C than a pineapple.”

“Broccoli contains a substance that may be thousands of times more powerful than antioxidants in fighting heart disease. However, according to a University of Saskatchewan study, it would be nearly impossible for most people to eat enough broccoli per day to give them a substantial benefit. Broccoli sprouts, on the other hand, contain 20 to 50 times more of this substance than the mature plant, meaning that a handful or two per day may allow your body to “correct major cardiovascular dysfunctions such as hypertension and stroke” according to the study’s leading author.”

“Home sprouting in your own controlled environment allows you to avoid contamination risks associated with comercially-grown sprouts.”
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Okay, we know sprouts are awesome, now….

Why a Sprouting Machine?

In ‘Fresh Food From Small Spaces’, the author recommended that if you were going to get serious about sprouting to invest in a sprouting device. It takes only minutes each day to fill the water and you can produce a lot at a time. 

Here are some thoughts from the book:

 “The use of automatic sprouters may raise some ethical questions for sustainable gardeners. Are these hydroponic systems? If they use energy and water to get the job done, how sustainable are they? First, they do qualify as hydroponic systems, but none of them uses lights, so their energy consumption is very low compared to the wasteful systems we associate with the word “hydroponic.” The Freshlife, for example, turns on for only a few minutes each hour and it uses just 8 watts of energy, which is much less than a lightbulb. These systems’ water use is also quite reasonable. The Easy Green, which is the larger of the two, can produce up to 6 pounds of fresh sprouts each week with only half a gallon of water per day. These systems are far more productive than any hydroponic garden, at a tiny fraction of the energy and water consumption. In fact, with the incredible amounts of water and energy required to farm and transport vegetables and meat, it is very wasteful not to have an automatic sprouting system at home that produces your own fresh veggies and protein.          …With no energy available, an automatic sprouter would make a very effective manual sprouter and would simply require occasional rinsing.”

After talking with Jeff, we decided to research some different sprouting machines. Jeff still wanted to build his own, but decided realistically that it wasn’t something that would happen anytime soon. We decided to purchase The Easy Green Sprouter. It was the best quality sprouting machine that we found (and also happened to cost the most.) We found a refurbished machine for sale on the website, which helped us afford it. Spending that much money, on our humble income, was a big investment for us. Adding more raw food to our diet and eating nutritious sprouts was a big priority for us though. When we got it in the mail, we were ecstatic. Jeff got it all set up right away. It wasn’t long before we were enjoying fresh sprouts with all our meals. I wanted to share about it here, but wanted to wait a little while until we had enough time to see how we really liked it. 

One thing I was hesitant about was that The Easy Green takes up a 18″ by 24″ space. We need all the counter top space in our kitchen that we can get, so I wondered how that would work out. It’s a little more cramped, but not that big of a deal (and so worth it.) We only have to fill up the water in the machine about once every 24 hours. The machine automatically mists the sprouts regularly. Occasionally, we take a break from sprouting to sanitize the machine with hydrogen peroxide. 

We are producing so much fresh food right on our kitchen counter top and it’s awesome! Soon, during the winter, when we no longer have fresh greens from our garden in abundance, we will still have fresh food growing in our very own kitchen.

Our favorite sprouts are: clover and radish (the easiest and the radish has a delicious spice.) We also like: kale, mustard, sunflowers, chinese cabbage, and broccoli. We sprout each kind of seed separately because they have different germination times. 

We like to eat our fresh sprouts with a little bit of raw apple cider vinegar on top, yum. 

Jeff saves many seeds from our garden and many seeds are reserved for sprouting. Growing our own sprouting seeds saves us a lot of money.

After some time, Jeff and I would both agree that buying a sprouting machine was a great investment for us. (Even though Jeff knows he could make one of higher quality and perhaps he will at some point.) I wanted to share about all of this with you because maybe you’ve had a similar experience as us, that sprouting in glass jars just didn’t stick, and you’d like sprouts made easy. If that’s the case, perhaps a sprouting machine will work wonders for you too.

And yes, most days Jeff is eating his bowl full of sprouts. 

You can imagine how he feels about that.