Winter Growing – Alfafa Sprouts and Pea Shoots Day 1

It’s about that time of year when I start planting seedlings.  But those seedlings won’t give me anything edible for a few months.  So in the meantime I wanted to grow something more immediately available.  I can’t remember why but somehow I decided I’d grow some pea shoots.  They seem like an expensive thing to buy but really cheap to grow, and it’s not that hard to sprout a seed….

Whenever I do something for the first time I like to go all out.  So when after making the decision to grow pea shoots it seemed like a good idea to do something else at the same time.  After all, if I’m going to the trouble to take care of one sprouting seed I might as well get more “bang for my buck”  and do something else.  (This is a good example of what Madame would probably refer to as me “getting carried away,” but that’s another story).  The “something else” came to me when I was at Full Circle Foods and saw alfalfa seeds (and speaking of “bang fo my buck, the alfalfa seeds cost about $1, and a large back of pea seeds was about $5 at the hardware store).  Sweet, I thought, now I can grow sprouts too!   Starting with tips from The Kitchn and Golightly Gardens I measured my seeds and got started.

For this experiment I measured a heaping tablespoon of alfalfa seeds and roughly a quarter cup of peas (weird how we don’t call them pea seeds, or do we??).

Day one of anything on-going can be rather uneventful,and this is no exception.  For day one of alfalfa sprouts and pea shoots you simply measure your seeds, put them in a container, and cover them with water.  Leave them overnight and then the next morning drain them, using something as a filter, I use a small metal strainer.

Alfalfa on the left, peas on the right.

The alfalfa seeds will need to be kept moist, and periodically rinsed, but no more soaking is necessary.  For the peas you can just keep them soaking until you begin to see little sprouts beginning to form.  At that point you’ll pot them up, but we’ll worry about that in the next post.  If you’re planning on doing this little project just go get some seeds and get them soaking.  In a couple days I’ll post the follow up to this post with what to do after you’ve put them in water….