I've just always grabbed whatever the local garden store has in stock, but a guy from another site is sending me some heirloom variety seeds to try. In fact, plans are for the 2020 garden are going to be almost all heirloom varieties, just for something different.
I started sprouting broccoli after I became aware of sulforaphane. I dry it well and then freeze it for use in smoothies. Sometime some fresh on a salad is also nice, but the taste is pretty peppery. I don't sprout anything else yet. The last two years I have grown California Wonder as my go to bell pepper. You can grab them green, or wait and take them when red. Despite being an heirloom variety, they get some size, maybe 4" peppers. I grew this years crop from seed I saved from the fruits of the previous year, and they were a little smaller, which I thought was weird? Good peppers though.
So, sprouting. Basically sprouts are more nutrient dense than the full plant considering their size. You sprout seeds or beans and after a few days they are sprouts. Wait another week or two and you have microgreens. You can sprout a ton of different seeds and beans but make sure you use ones marked for sprouting or culinary use because of the way they are processed or treated. You are sprouting these things and often eating them raw. I specifically wanted broccoli for that chemical Improper mentioned but they all typically have a great nutrient profile with omega-3's, fiber, calcium, phosphurus, and more, depending on which you're sprouting. You can sprout broccoli, any kind of bean (though mung is what is used for your asian bean sprouts), alfalfa, radish, chia, and more. They can be eaten in smoothies, in salads, on sandwiches. Your imagination is the limiting factor. Especially if you let them get bigger you can use them as a lettuce replacement. I've sprouted mung beans before but stumbled across this video the other day that inspired me to get a jump on indoor gardening and sprouting. Skip forward to 10:10 to the part about sprouting in a mason jar so you can see how to do it yourself: I bought lids on amazon for about a buck a piece: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RZX5Q1W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I keep my mason jars tipped in a bowl in the pantry and rinse them with cold filtered water in the morning and at night. They grow pretty fast. I did a tablespoon of seeds in a quart sized jar.
They are very quick! 5 days or so from first soak to a very full, ready to eat jar. https://www.stephgaudreau.com/how-to-grow-broccoli-sprouts-at-home/
Nett, I randomly listened to a Rogan podcast that had Dr Rhonda talking about sprouting broccoli, and she is a bright bright human. Excerpt: https://youtu.be/0UqxC2RDF64
I've sprouted broccoli, alfalfa, and a bean mix. I've almost finished eating the broccoli sprouts. I really recommend them. They are extremely mild and fresh tasting. I used a fuckton of them on a wrap and some sandwiches. Mine were a tangled mess so I had to kind of pull them apart and fluff them out. If you get too big of a mouthful they can get stuck between your teeth or a little stringy. I'm sure the alfalfa will be good too. I threw the beans away a few days ago. They were smelling weird, I had a ton that didn't sprout, and the ones that did didn't look that great. I'll try them one more time before giving up but overall wasn't that impressed with them. Edit: the alfalfa rotted (??). Looks like I can only do sprouts for them, not microgreens. Use them while they're young or they'll be no good.
I have not tried it yet, but I have read that sunflower seed sprouts are quite nice. I do parsley, chive, beet, carrot, basil, radish, etc. for micro-greens/sprouts (is there a difference between these terms?) fairly often. If I know I have a dinner that I am hosting, or am bringing a dish to a party, or just want to fluff up a special meal - a week or so before, I will start some seeds in coir (a coconut byproduct, cheap as hell, and more environmentally friendly than peat moss), some vermiculite, and some water. Plant VERY heavily, keep damp, and covered. Cut off with sheers when ready. A nice garnish to just about anything, and so easy, if not entirely pretentious and ridiculous. @bewildered I am also looking for a solid bell pepper for my zone. I'm doing Shishito's and my own Tabasco's, but would love a bell.
I see that Nett mentioned staring tomato seeds now. What do you guys use for seeding pots? I got heirloom tomatoes to try out this year and I’ve never started them from seeds before. There’s a lot of options out there. Also I see the recommended time frame for starting them is six weeks from when you plan on planting. Here in Zone 5 I don’t plant until Memorial Day. So I’m guessing early April.
Gonna try my hand at this gardening thing. I used to love doing it when I was younger, but my wife has the opposite of a green thumb. She stares at plants and they die. It might be her scent or something that kills them. The only thing that's stayed alive for longer than a month in our house is our dogs and our kids. We've taken to buying fake plants its so bad. I actually have a cabinet full of fake flowers so whenever I feel like getting her flowers I pull out a handful and put them in a vase. It's that bad. I ordered five, 15" planters I'm going to use for rosemary, thyme, mint, oregano and cilantro on our back porch. Any advice on how to not fuck this up and/or keep it away from her glare is much appreciated.
Walt, I have near 100% germination from these fellas, they are very small covered germination stations.: https://www.amazon.com/Jiffy-J410-4...ocphy=9026254&hvtargid=pla-319821401403&psc=1 You can pick your size, but I pay like $6 for the 36 cell one locally. You can purchase just the peat pellets for next year, so save the plastic bits and save $3.
Last year I bought a 1000 pack of dehydrated peat pods. It was some stupid Amazon deal or something. I've had great luck with them, with the exception that the netting used for them is not biodegradable. I still have tons of them left. and they worked out to pennies each.
@walt I have a big rubbermade bin filled with plastic pots that I reuse in the spring for starting seedlings and just fill them up with good potting soil. I have used the little pop up peat pods before but they are not my favorite to use. I am a fan of starting seeds on a damp papertowel or napkin and transferring germinated seeds to a small pot. They can spend quite some time in that small pot before I need to repot or transplant outside. I also don't like the netting on the pods. I often use older seeds or seeds that I'm not super confident in and like to keep an eye on them for progress. The tomatoes used this year were a few years old and taco sauce peppers were seeds I scavenged from the bottom of a bag of dried peppers. I germinated in a domed rotisserie chicken container in my bright kitchen window so I could check on the seeds daily without much effort. Out of sight, out of mind is real for me. I germinated tomatoes (beefsteak and roma), peppers (guajillo, arbol -> taco sauce, jalapenos, CA wonder and red mercury bells), and copenhagen cabbage. The cabbage germinated almost instantly and I moved those directly to some planters hanging on my deck railing. I germinated cascade sugar snap peas last week and those are also in the deck planters. It's still cool outside especially at night but those plants are supposed to be more cold tolerant. I've decided to keep my early season stuff up on the deck in smaller numbers and then go full hog for summer stuff in the garden. I let the ducks wander the whole garden while it is inactive and this gives them more time with more room as well as saving me the effort of going up and downstairs constantly to maintain a few plants. When you germinate on a damp napkin you have to be on top of transplanting. I was almost too late on the tomatoes I potted up tonight. They went from "are these seeds even viable" to 1.5" root in a day. Luckily the fibers of a napkin are really uniform so it's easy to carefully pull out any longer roots if they get enmeshed a bit. My peppers are all starting to wake up so they should be ready to put in pots in a day or two. I use the fat end of a chopstick to create a hole in my soil, drop in a germinated seed, manipulate the seed as needed with the chopstick, and carefully encase with soil loosely. It works well and keeps my hands clean. I practically salivate over all the amazing varieties of seeds in the catalogues that come through the mail but I was trying to keep the costs down a bit this go around. Not so much with flower seeds, but with vegetable seeds I often don't need that much in terms of quantity. Some of the websites like myseedneeds are a good buy for how many they give you but I don't need that many plants. I have a lot on hand already anyway. I bought a couple varieties of bell peppers as well as zucchini, yellow squash, and some different beans from the local bi-mart here. They ended up being about $11.50 and I'll have some seeds for next season too. If I ordered from one of the seed companies I would have easily spent 40 or 50 bucks. No need for all that. Last season I started a big variety of heirloom seeds and had so many extra plants. I was able to easily sell the roma tomatoes but no one was really interested in the more interesting tomatoes so they were just wasted effort and resources. This time I stuck with things I will definitely use and can reasonably sell to locals here. I started more than I need but should be able to sell the extras and cover the cost on my seeds and soil.
Well what started as wanting to grow some basic herbs on the back porch has now turned into what looks like a full-scale project. Made the mistake of taking my son with me to Home Depot and he got the gardening itch since apparently he’s the only 5 year old on the planet who likes vegetables. Made the mistake of telling him in front of my wife that if he helps me with the herbs and two bell pepper plants he picked out for this spring, that in the winter I’ll build a proper wicking bed for a fall garden. here’s to hoping him and my wife forget
Saw this on reddit. Thought it was a nice simple idea for raised beds. The corners are brick pieces found at Home Depot. Some people have driven rebar through the holes to secure the corners in place.
My current tomatoes / peppers in the Jiffy peat pellets. No more tearing the net, it has an open hole on the top side.
Yeah, mine are the same pods, but I find about 10% of them have fucked up netting, so as part of the seeding process I have to adjust or tear the nets for them. Not even close to a deal breaker.
I usually start onions from slips, but I went mad and started from seed this year. Here are 6 flats of slips that I did at home, they are actually going to be planted this afternoon.