How to Grow Sprouts & Microgreens

1. Intro to Sprouts & Microgreens: Hi, everyone. I'm crystal from Perma crafters, and today I'm going to talk about growing sprouts and microgreens at home. I'm going to go over what sprouts and microgreens are, why you would want to grow them, how to pick and choose, which wants to eat safety precautions to take. And then I'll go over the steps and materials for sprouting and growing microgreens and in case you run into any trouble and throwing in some troubleshooting tips as well. Last but not least, we'll go over some delicious recipes that you can make at home, with sprouts from sprouted Hamas to almond milk and so much more so forget to follow, along with the instructions document that's been prepared for you as well. I'll say right now that I'm not a gardening guru and I don't have all the answers, but I do love sprouting, and that's why I'm sharing my passion with you. The techniques that I show in this workshop are ones that work well for me, and my hope is that this workshop motivates you to start growing your own sprouts right at home. Once you realize just how easy it really is. So ready to get sprouting 2. What are sprouts & microgreens?: what is sprouting and what are sprouts and microgreens. Well sprouting is the practice of germinating seeds, and you can germinate all kinds of scenes from leafy greens, toe legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds. Seeds have a dormant germ inside of them, and it's brought to life when it shocked in water and kept in optimal moisture conditions to germinate. It doesn't need any sunlight when you think about it. Sees are designed to start their lives under the soil in the dark outdoors to sprout. This see doesn't need any additional nutrients, either. It's on Lee, using the nutrient that it has stored inside of itself to sprout. All you have to do is give it the water that it needs. Once you do that, your seeds germinate. They're officially sprouts after 2 to 7 days of growth, depending on your seat and on your taste preference, you can eat your sprouts. Roots, stem, underdeveloped leaves and all all types of seeds will sprout. But not all plants are meant to be eaten sprouts. Some are toxic at this stage, so stay tuned for the safety precautions section where I walk you through which ones to avoid so we've covered sprouts. What are microgreens? Well, most plans begin their lives at seeds and sprouts. Microgreens are essentially young sprouts that cap maturing for a week or two longer, but in different conditions we light and usually in the soil you see. After about a week or so, sprouts will run out of their energy stores if they want to keep growing. They need sunlight, start photo synthesizing and nutrient rich soil or hydroponics system for further nutrition and also to support their roots. Microgreens air about 1 to 3 inches in height so they're larger than sprouts. But they're smaller than baby greens. Now get this scientifically speaking. A micro green doesn't become a micro green until it's true. Leaves develop limb. Explain the first set of leaves on this sunflower. Michael Green are the Cottle Eden's. These come from the seeds embryo. The second set leaves that are starting to grow here for the cattle. Even splits are known as the true leaves they develop from the plant stem. Technically, once the true leaves appear, it's officially a micro green. If the true leaves aren't there yet is technically called a soil sprout. However, a lot of companies that sell seeds for sprouts and microgreens refer to these soil sprouts as microgreens, asking you to harvest them when the first leaves appear. And pea shoots, which are technically shoots, not microgreens, are also commonly referred to his microgreens. So for the sake of simplicity referred to all of these as microgreens. Just like many sprouting companies dio with microgreens, you usually just eat the leaves and the stems. But sometimes you can also eat the roots, like with radish microgreens. So should you eat your seeds as sprouts or microgreens? It depends. Some taste equally good as both, like radishes and broccoli. Often it's just a matter of preference. Whether you prefer milder or stronger flavours, it's up to you to explore so half one doing it. 3. Benefits of growing sprouts & microgreens: Why would you want to grow sprouts and microgreens? The primary? Two reasons to sprout your seeds are to remove toxins and maximize their nutritional value . You can also easily grow sprouts and microgreens year round, indoors and have nutrient packed fresh food when you want at a fraction of their store price. Let me break down those reasons for you. How does sprouting remove toxins? All seas have toxins to protect themselves from being eaten by bacteria, Phone use and animals. Without these toxins is an evolutionary strategy. These seeds just wouldn't have survived. If you soak the seats, however, it's the first step in the sprouting process. Those toxic substances are reduced as the seeds beginning to germinate. Raw lentils, for instance, have lecterns or anti nutritional proteins in them. If you sprout them, it reduces those lecterns. You can also reduce them by cooking, but then you end up by losing a lot of the lentils. Nutritional value. The second reason to sprout is that sprouts offer the best nutritional value of all the land based fruits and veggies. Plans are at the peak of their nutritional value when they're at their sprouts stage. If you compare a sprout with a dry seed or a sprout with it's fully grown counterpart, the sprout will have more vitamins, minerals, proteins and essential fatty acids. Why is that? Sprouting kicks, season toe life and jump starts metabolic activity? These little seeds are packed with all the nutrients they'll need to grow without any son or any additional nutrients for a whole week. Enzymes and the seeds are rapidly converting all their concentrated nutrients into complex materials to help them grow into mature plants. Sprouts are the best enzyme rich foods. These enzymes essentially free digest complex nutritional structures, making them easily digestible and assimilated by your body. Carbohydrates become simple sugars. Complex proteins become easily digested amino acids, fats are converted to fatty acids and vitamin levels search with dry lentils. For instance, the amount of vitamin C content is so low it can't be measured if you sprout the lentils. However, there one of better sources of vitamin C if you eat a variety of sprouted leafy greens, legumes, grains and nuts there a source of complete protein. Because they contain all eight essential amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. The's sprouts even absorb minerals and trace elements from your rinsing water, including iodine, zinc, selenium, chromium, cobalt in silicon. Now, microgreens also boasts a high nutritional value. Since they're grown in the sun. The difference is that they'll have chlorophyll in them and depending on the richness of the soil that they're grown in potentially more nutrients than sprouts. Micro green nutrition is also affected by how you harvest them and how long it takes for them to reach your plate. So to make sure you get the most out of your greens will share proper growing and harvesting guidelines with you. Something else that sprouts and microgreens do is help maintain or restore the proper alkaline acid balance in your body. With so many of us eating process acidic foods, eating alkaline foods helps neutralize acidic waste by products that we produce and restore balance. The majority of sprouts and microgreens are alkaline will just buckwheat and rye being slightly acidic? I recommend you definitely eat your sprouts raw when the raw their nutrients are intact. When you cook food, you end up losing a lot of the nutrients. With that being said, some sprouts should be cooked because they're too difficult to Digest. This includes black beans, pinto beans and brown rice with other sprouts like keen wah in soybeans. It's optional to cook them. It depends on your preference. Sprouting them prior to cooking will boost their nutritional value, and you'll lose less nutrients if you cook them lightly. The third reason to sprout is that you have access year rounds to fresh, delicious greens that are much cheaper than those you would purchase with store. Okay, that's a whole lot of reasons looped into one. There are so many different types of flavorful sprouts and microgreens that are so varied in texture and taste. When you grow them at home, you know that they're not drowning and chemicals and that they haven't been sitting for days in the store. They're fresh, and you can harvest them immediately before you plan to eat them. If you've got a brown thumb guilty, there's really no time to kill the sprouts like Arendse, because you just don't have time to mess up. Um, they're low maintenance, and you don't need much space to grow them. And if you're growing microgreens, you don't even need a window that's perfectly facing south. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, That is the reason that I love to eat sprouts is because I went on a health kick in 2010 where I had nothing but raw food for three weeks and 60% of that food and volume was sprouts. After three weeks, my skin had cleared up. My mental clarity was back and I was more energetic than ever. So I was sold on the power of sprouts and on the power of food in general is medicine. 4. Safety Precautions: When you sprout, there are certain basic health considerations and safety precautions to take into account. These are detailed in your instructions document, so please refer to that to refresh your memory if need be. First, you want to make sure that what you're sprouting is edible in its sprout stage, rhubarb and season. The night shades family such as tomato, pepper, paprika and eggplant are not meant to be eaten. Add sprouts even if you cook them because they contain to money toxins. At this stage, your seed should also be organic and meant for sprouting, so stay tuned for more details later on about proper seat selection. The next health consideration you want to take into account is stomach sensitivity. Now for some people like my mom. Sorry, Mom. Eating regular chickpeas upsets their stomach. If she sprouts her chickpeas, however, like she does to make her sprouted homis, she could eat chickpeas just fine. For some people, eating large sprouted beans has the exact opposite effects. The starch and protein and the seeds can just be too hard to digest. So if this happens to you, you could try gently cooking sprouted beans. Remember that black pains pinto beans and brown rice need to be cooked after sprouting. Some people need to cook their kino and soybeans as well to digest them properly. But listen to your body. If it tells you to stay away from large sprouted beans altogether, stay away. Another health tip is to not consume the water that your seeds are soaking in. You might be used to soaking raw lentils and water overnight before cooking them in that same water afterwards. If you use the water that they were soaking in, it'll contain the toxins that were shed by the seed and possibly bacteria as well. Use this water for house plants instead. The last precaution you want to take is safe food handling. You may have heard of sprouts being associated to equalize. Seven l A listeria outbreaks. Now, if you think about it, sprouts are grown in warm, humid conditions, and bacteria arrive under those conditions. So, yeah, outbreaks are a real possibility. You can't see, taste or smell these bacteria. So what do you dio? Well, you can cook the sprouts, but to me, that really defeats the purpose of growing sprouts. Or you can grow them yourself and properly follow the safe food handling practices. There's always going to be an inherent risk, but if you follow these guidelines, you'll be in good shape. Here are those precautions Jews quality seeds that have been tested for equal and salmonella. Now this should be standard practice for companies selling seeds for sprouting. Rinse Hersi's before using them. The Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, recommends you sanitizer sees by mixing one ounce of regular household bleach with 10 ounces of water. They recommend you to soak your seeds in that mixture for five minutes and rinse them three times with fresh water before you start sprouting. Now I never do this, but it is good practice to stay safe. I'm letting you know what the FDA recommendation is so that you can make up your own mind. Wash your hands before touching the sprouts for 20 seconds with hot sudsy water. Beware of cross contamination. Don't touch sprouts when you're handling raw meats or raw eggs. Raw fish. Make sure to keep everything separate. Washer counters. Use clean cutting boards and utensils. Rinse the sprouts before consuming them. If you want to, you can miss them with a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide at each rinse cycle. Refrigerate your sprouts. Once you're done, sprouting them. If they look musty or slimy, discard them washer sprouting containers after every youth in warm sudsy water, then rinse them with hot water. You can also dry them in the sunshine if you want. Also, clean your micro green containers between crops with bleach or warm sudsy water. If you're using the trace, prouder, it's prone to mold. Rinse each trade individually and move the tray around to allow the water to drain off completely before restocking the trays. 5. The 5 groups of sprouts & microgreens: There are all kinds of sprouts and microgreens from leafy greens, beans, grain, seeds and nuts. How are you meant to navigate them all? Which ones should you eat? Well, as with many things in life, variety is key To make sure that you get all the benefits that these baby plants have to offer. You can pick and choose from five different groups. The first group that you can choose from Arthuis Super Shoots thes are microgreens that pack the biggest punch. They include sunflower microgreens, pea shoots, buck wheat lettuce and we crests. These little guys are a group of their own because they're the best in terms of overall nutrition. Sunflower, micro green constitute a complete protein, meaning that they contain a balanced amount of every amino acid that your body needs. These are my absolute favorite, and they also happen to be one of the best ones for health. I could eat them morning, noon and night. These guys are delicious peashooter next for packed with full late and antioxidants when they're about two inches high. Like this, they taste delicious, and they're a perfect salad. Garnish. If you let them grow too tall, they begin to taste woody, so those will be good to throw into smoothies. At that point, the neat thing about patients is it they'll re grow after you cut them. So here are second growth pea shoots, for example. They'll even grow third time if you let them, although they won't look quite as vibrant. Next up is buckwheat lettuce, you guys, and they can be eaten at their sprouts stage or as a micro green. It's often consumed to help eliminate cholesterol, and you don't need to overdo it. With this micro green, a small amount goes a long way. Wheat grass is also in this group, and I'm sure you've heard of wheat grass because it's the ultimate whole food. It's abundant and chlorophyll, and many claim that it contains every amino, acid, vitamin and mineral necessary for human nutrition. It's so potent that people typically just have a small shot of weak rests. It's bursting with life. The main reason I don't drink it regularly is because it takes longer to prepare. The wheat grass needs to be juiced, know the regular juicer, but with a grinding juicer like this one here, it's more work. And if health is your number one priority. That is definitely worth the time investment. Ah, lot of people who are going through health difficulties drink wheatgrass to help with their blood pressure, their cholesterol levels and some cancers. Now I personally don't drink it because, well, I'm already relatively healthy. But if I needed to boost my health, I would most certainly turn two week dress. The second group is made up of leafy green sprouts. This includes alfalfa, broccoli, fenugreek, radish and many more listed in your instructions document. They all have different nutritional profiles, but those in the brassica family, like broccoli and radishes, are consumed for their anti cancer properties. In broccoli microgreens, there's a nutrient called soul for a fen. It has anticancer, anti diabetic and anti microbial properties, and its present 20 to 50 times more then and fully grown broccoli radishes are delicious as sprouts or microgreens. They contain the essence. Other, fully grown sells. Packing a nice burst of spiciness, you can even eat the roots of microgreens radishes. Alfalfa is also really fresh and tasting. If you grow it at home, you can put it on sandwiches to replace lettuce, for example. Fenugreek is another sprout that I would try to have regularly. It's a good source of phosphorous and iron, and if you're nursing your baby, it'll boost your milk production. So I used it a lot when I had Luna. The third group is sprouted legumes. This includes beans, peas and lentils with nice about Thestrals is that they can take a little, is two days to sprout and be ready to eat. I love sprouting Garvan Zoe's, for example. They make a really good protein stack, and you can also make delicious sprouted homis with them. Lentils are yummy, too. Even if you plan to cook your lentils, you can sprout them beforehand to increase the nutritional value and then lightly cooked them If you want to, you can also sprout being mixes like this one that has a variety of beans in it. Some beans should still be cooked after you sprout them, like black beans or pinto beans. Zookeeper beans and among beans are particularly great because they're the best mineral sources among beans, which are prominent and Asian cuisine are barely recognizable when they're grown artificially there really fat rooted in huge because they're grown with special gases and chemical treatments. It's not possible to recreate this thick rooted look at home, but you can make the roots partially bigger by sprouting more of the sea that once forcing them to grow in crowded conditions. The fourth group is sprouted grains like amaranth, spelt Millet Kino and tough thes air, all al colonizing grains. You can also give buck wheat, kamut rye and wheat Berries a try like legumes. Grains could be eaten within just a couple days. After the Sochi period. You could make hearty salads out of them, or I like having sprouted buckwheat groats as my breakfast cereal. The fifth and last group is sprouted nuts and seeds. These guys are perfect to get your fix of essential fatty acids and amino acids. When it comes to sprouts and microgreens in the other four categories, you can eat as many of them as you please with nuts and seeds, though they shouldn't be eaten as liberally since they're so high in fats, albeit good fats having a handful of soaked almonds or flax seeds. Chia seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds a few times a week is ideal. You can also make your own almond milk after soaking the almonds, and we'll show you how, when we talk about recipes 6. Seed selection & storage: Whether you want to grow sprouts or microgreens, you're going to need to start with seeds. So how do you select your seeds and how do you store them? It's easy as to select sees that are meant for sprouting or for microgreens. If they're produced and packaged specifically for this purpose, you can generally be assured that their untreated, organic and non GMO they'll be viable and they'll have a low percentage of foreign matter in them. Now, the company I like to purchase from is called high mowing, because that really nice options for buying in bulk. You get £5 bags like this huge bag of Regula seeds. So it's really nice for me because I just sprout and grow microgreens a lot or otherwise. If you're just getting started, you can buy their smaller packs here so you have a variety of options for seeds, for both sprouting and for growing microgreens, and you can order any kind of amount that you want online. You can also go to your local health food store and see what options they have there for you. If you're going with see that are not specifically meant for sprouting. There are several things that you want to make sure of. Firstly, you don't want to select. See that are meant for sewing or bird seeds, for that matter, because they may have been treated with chemicals. And you don't want that in your sprouts. Peas and Spanish seeds meant for sewing often have fungicides in them, for example. Next you want to make sure that your seeds are raw. In other words, we don't want them to be dead. You don't want them to have been cooked or they will not sprout, and you don't want them to have been dehydrated dried where they will not sprout, either. Thirdly, when you choose your seeds, you want to make sure that they are in good condition. If there are unviable, season your mix. They can mold and sometimes ruin your whole batch of sprouts. You can buy your seeds from the bulk section and stores I do so frequently. Just know that some seas may be damaged when they're stored in those conditions. Another thing to consider is whether the seeds are hold or not. A seat typically is covered by a hole and then an outer shell or a pod if the seizure purchasing our hold. That means that their whole and any other potential outer protection has been removed. If that's the case, they may be too damaged to sprout seed like sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, pumpkin spelt and barley can get very damaged in the whole process. If you want to purchase them hold, you'd have to go through a sprouting seed company to make sure that they're in mint condition. Pumpkin seeds, for example, actually sprout faster when they're hold, but they need to be hold with great care and kept in excellent condition. Other scenes, like millet, can also be damaged when they're holds. So looking for a new hold millet seeds is a safer bet. Some greens will do just fine if they're hold, though, like buckwheat growths. So as a general rule, if you're buying, sees there and specifically meant for sprouting. Prioritize unholy scenes. There'll be less damage, and you'll have much higher germinates rates. One final things take in to account for certain seeds is whether you're getting seeds for growing sprouts or microgreens. If you want to eat sunflower sprouts, you want to get them shelled. Otherwise you're gonna have a crunchy, inedible sprout with a hard shell on it. If you want to get some flour microgreens, that shell will fall off on its own once it grows nice until with buckwheat. If you want to eat buckwheat sprouts, you want to sprout buckwheat groats, which do not have a whole again. You don't want to be sprouting whole buckwheat, or you'll end up with a sprout with such a hard exterior on it that it's impossible or uncomfortable to eat with most sprouts and microgreens. You don't have to worry about this, and you can use the same seed to sprout sprouts or grow microgreens. This generally applies only to see that are sold with hard protective holes or shells on them. Okay, so you have your seeds to store them. You want to make sure that they're in a dry, airtight container labeled glass or metal jars. Work just fine. Keep them in a cool environment or at room temperature, and make sure that they're away from sunlight and away from heat. If you do, this will keep for 2 to 3 years, sometimes even up to five years. If you don't have a good storage space for them, you can always freeze them and take them out when you're ready to use them. 7. Supplies list for sprouting: wait. Finally gets crowding. Me, too. I'm gonna walk you through your supplies list and your step by step guidelines. So here's what you're going to need. You gonna need your seats, which you know how to select now gonna need your filtered water, and any kind of regular water filter will work for this. And then you'll need your sprout er, and there's a whole variety of spreaders to choose from and depending on your type of sprout er, you might also need a bull or a drying wreck of sorts. So let's walk you through those spotters. How do you choose your spotter? There are really four main models you can choose from. You have the jars prouder, the easy sprouts broader, the hemp bags prouder and the trace broader. The short answer is, use what you've got. All of these will work some better than others, depending on what your seeds are. The jars broader is a super easy Spiro to use, and it's generally my go to sprout. Er, everyone has a jar lying around at home, and all you have to do is put either cheesecloth on it and fasten it with the metal screw Benz or with the sturdy rubber bands. Or you can purchase reusable sprouting lives like this metallic one or a plastic one. If you use a story, you'll also need to have a drying rack or a bull or anything that it can sit, and I don't need to let the water drip out in. I like this job because it's easy. It's affordable. You can soak and sprout the season the same jar. There's no need to transfer them out. You want to make sure that your jar has a wide mouth, so it gets more air circulation and drains well. You don't want your jar sitting in water and rotting. The star is an ideal for sprouts that grow tall and straight up like alfalfa, since you turn the jar upside down when you rinse the seeds. But I still use it for all my sprouts. The tall ones just get tangled up, but it doesn't really bother me. The next Browder is the easy sprout sprout er. This one has better air circulation, and it's really easy to travel with. Now it has various parts to it. The growing vessel, which is where you put your seeds the base in which your water drains and it has a domed lid as well. It's a really convenient sprout er that works for all types of seeds. Alfalfa works really well for this broader, too, because you don't need to turn it upside down and the alfalfa will grow straight up in your spotter. This gadget is all you need. The heavy bag is next. This one is really great for traveling to, and you could bring it everywhere. The fiber allows for a great circulation, and when you need to drain it right off the water from your sprouts, all you have to do is hang it up above your sink or wherever it makes sense for you to do it. Now, this bag is not ideal for small seas because they'll get roughed up when you rinse them and they might be get caught into your bag. So, for example, here I'm having some alfalfa grew in here. Well, look at that beautiful off alpha. You'll see that a lot of them will get tangled up into the bag and it'll be hard to wash afterwards. So this bag is perfect for those larger seeds, like legumes. and grains sprouting trays. What's nice about these is they conspire out different types of seeds at once on different levels of the tray, you can sprout all kinds of seize on here. Delicate ones do really well. For instance, the downsides are they have to soak the scenes in a separate container and that if you're not careful about draining them off properly, then it could be prone to mold. 8. Step-by-step sprouting instructions: you have your supplies, it's time to get started. No matter what's broader use, the steps are all the same. You measure out your seeds, you rinse your scenes, you soak them overnight and then you rinse them 2 to 3 times a day, morning and night. Until they're ready. Let me walk you through those steps. Now we're going to use a simple jar sprout er and alfalfa seeds as your example. The way I do it is by starting in the evening, right before I go to bed before starting anything you want to wash your hands and make sure that your equipment is freshly washed. Then you want to measure out how many seeds you're going to need. And honestly, for this part, you can kind of eyeball it. You'll get a feel for what amount looks right, but I like using a pint sized mason jar. And if you use a pint size mason jar, you want to use about 1.5 tablespoon of seeds, so I'm gonna put 1.5 tablespoons of alfalfa in here. Go on. I'm going to put my sprouting let on and then I'm going to rinse my seeds with filtered water. You go. So I'm giving an initial rinse. And remember, the FDA wants you to rinse it in, uh, part water, part bleach. But I just use water, so use whatever sounds best to you. So we're giving it an initial rinse, and then we're going to soak RCTV's overnight. So I'm gonna add water again, swished them around to make sure they're all underwater, if any of them are not underwater, this case sale went underwater. But if they are floating, that means that they haven't soaked up enough water. And in that case, you could just push them down if you need to. So I'm just going to let this sit on the counter overnight for 8 to 12 hours and I'm off to bed. So good night. Well, good morning. Yeah, I am wearing the same clothes is yesterday. First thing in the morning. Drain the water off of your seeds and feed them to your house plants. They will thrive on that water. Remember not to drink or cook with this water because the seeds have released their toxins into that water. So you want to rinse your sprouts morning and night at least twice a day until they are ready to harvest. If you manage to get another rinse and at lunchtime, that's great, and they'll just grow faster when you rinse, recedes, really take your time. You're going to add water like this and swirl the seeds around and for about 30 seconds or so, and this is really the only source of water that they're going to get for another 12 hours . So take your time, so we're gonna rinse them out. We're going to place them on this drawing wreck. Have rinse my sees. They have good air circulation. They're draining, so I'm off to work. I'm going to keep rinsing them morning and night, and within a day or two their little tails will show. And that's when they have germinated. So I'll just keep them growing to the size of my liking. It's seven days later, and this alfalfa has long tails on it. Now it's ready to be harvested. I could have harvested them earlier, but I probably wouldn't want to harvest it later than today. It's up to you exactly when to harvest, so long as they have a tail, and that you're harvesting within the 1st 7 days. Your getting all that excellent nutrition from them. Removing the holes on these sprouts is optional because, really, they're just fibrous and we'll go right through you. Some holes have a bitter flavor, though, so they might be crunchy, too, and you might want to remove them. But it's completely up to you. Here are some ways to remove the holes You can put your sprouts in a bowl of filtered water and vigorously swish them around. The holes will float to the top, and it's relatively easy to remove them. Another method is to use a salad spinner and remove them that way instead. If you have leafy sprouts like these, you can also take a handful and directly place them under strong running tap water to encourage the holes to fall off. So you've harvested your sprouts. It's time to store them. If you've gotten rid of the holes, your sprouts will be wet, so you want to let them dry for a few hours. Once they aren't dripping wet anymore, you can refrigerate them. You can put them in a container that's lined with a moist paper towels like these or You can also use green bags like those they'll keep fresh longer in them, so once you've done this will be good in the fridge for about one week. 9. Exception sprouts: way, regular way require different stories method. Gelatinous seeds, for example, need to be sprouted a bit differently. Thes seizing food, Flax seeds, Chia seeds a regula and crests Look what happens if you try to sprout Shia the regular way . I've just soaked my chia seeds overnight and I'm getting ready to drain off the water and well, longer that it's a gooey gel like substance at the water is just not draining off. So what do I do? Instead? I take a piece of fabric that the seeds cannot get tangled up in, and I moisten it just like this. So I'm going to put Chia seeds on this fabric, and I'm gonna put some flax seeds on it to Libs. I like that. Then I'm just going to moisten it and you want to basically just keep it moist until they have completely germinated and I don't want bugs getting into it. So I'm just going to put a bull on top of mind like that and just keep it moist the whole time. So just morning and evening, give it some water on five days later. This is the end result that, uh so that is how you can sprout gelatinous seeds. Now, with less gelatinous seeds like crest, you can simply sprout them the regular way. But mix them in with other non gelatinous seems like alfalfa, so that the gelatinous substance they produce is deluded. If you do, this makes one part of gelatinous scenes with four parts of non gelatinous seeds. With this method, you just want to make sure that the seeds you're mixing will be ready to be harvested at similar times. Nuts are an exception. Sprout to you can eat almonds within just one day of sprouting, but you might not necessarily see their little tails emerge. They can sometimes take longer to germinate, but that doesn't mean that you won't get all the benefits of sprouting by eating them earlier. Large nuts should also be stored in water in the refrigerator, as opposed to in a sealed container, just like this 10. Supplies list for microgreens: all right, moving on to microgreens before we get started on steps, I'm going to walk you through your supplies list so you're going to need your seeds, of course, and then a jar spatter is simply a bowl to soak and rinse her season filtered water your containers. Make sure to clean them before and after every use. You want drip trays to put under your containers. You won't need these. If you select containers without holes, though, need some soil. Fertiliser is optional. You can use compost or kelp like liquid kelp works really well. You can get them at your local gardening store. Gallon size storage bags or containers like this are optional. If you want to, pre makes your soil unbleached paper towels or soy based newspaper that you'll reuse. And last but not least, a window sill. If that window sill gets light most of the day, perfect. If it doesn't, you're microgreens might struggle, but they'll still grow. If you really don't have enough light indoors, you can purchase grow lamps. Ideally blue spectrum enriched for vegetative growth. You want them to have high lumens and low watts, so I'm going to walk you through a couple of these basic supplies in more detail. Let's talk about what kind of containers you'll need, so you have a lot of room here to get creative with what you can recycle and turn into a micro green growing container. Any size or shape will do, but the most ideal container is shallow, wide and fits right on your windowsill. You go with deeper containers, but you'll just end up wasting soil. So what you're using needs to be food grade, so any food storage containers will work just fine. Like take out boxes or mushroom boxes. You have a lot of options. Just make sure that your container isn't made of lead or pewter. If you don't want to recycle containers, you can also buy these ones from your local gardening store. You have the bottom one that has no holes and the top one that has holes. So you have your directory. And if it's really well together, so a lot of options, So should you have holes or no holes? New container. Well, this is really up to you. I punch holes into my containers because I want good drainage and I don't want to worry about whether I've over watered my plants. If you're growing you're microgreens for more than 10 days, then you'll definitely want to have holes in your containers to avoid right. If you have containers with holes, you'll need to have some kind of drip tray below them for the extra water to drain into. If you go with containers without holes, you just want to make sure that you're not overwatering them and that you're not growing your plants for more than 10 days. For your soil, you want soil that is light that retains water. That's a septic and friable. You want nice and fluffing growing medium for your plants. When you're navigating all the different kinds of soils of the store, it could get really confusing. What you want to look for is organic potting soil or potting mix. It sometimes also goes by planting mix. It's the same thing, or you can also get organic seed starting mix. This also goes by the names of Germany mix stayed raising mix, seed raising, blend, seed, sowing soil, soilless growing mix and growing medium soil. Both of these the potting soil and the seed starting mix thing we used interchangeably for the purposes of growing microgreens. The's mixes go by so many names and garden stores, and the craziest part is, even though they sometimes call them soil, they don't actually have any soil on them. So if you go with the seed starting mix option, then you can have a sneak peek at the label. Your soil should have peat moss in it for Miku, light, perlite and sometimes limestone minute my Kreisel fungi and maybe some kelp or shellfish meal in there. And coconut core peat moss and perlite are great for root growth, so those ingredients I would look for in your soil. But if you're getting one of the soils we listed, you can't go wrong. What, you don't want to use its straight organic compost, which is too acidic or bagged topsoil or garden. Mix oil because that soil is too hard for roots to penetrate. Don't go for straight peat moss, either. You want to make sure that your soil is free of hydra gels and chemical fertilizers, so get organic soil only. Jeez, that was a complicated part, wasn't it? I hope I make it simple for you. Something else to consider is that you want to have good circulation, where your micro greens are growing and not keep your house too cold in the winter or too cold in the summer with air conditioning, either. 11. Step-by-step microgreens instructions : Once you have all your supplies get started, I'm gonna walk you through the step by step instructions for growing your microgreens. So before doing anything else, the first thing that I like to do is prepare my soil for the next couple of months. What does this mean? Well, I'm going to moisten my soil with water to make the perfect incubation mix for my micro greens. And I'm not going to make just enough for one day. I'm going to make so money that I'm gonna have enough for a few months and I can put them in different types of storage containers, so I don't have to worry about it for another couple months. And I don't have to get my kitchen dirty every time. So the sealed bags are going to keep the soil in perfect, moist condition and you reuse the bags as many times as you want, so it's so much nicer to do it all in one go. So the way I prepared my soil is by mixing one cup of water with four cups of soil so you can mix your soil and water directly into a bull if you want. Teoh and again the reason you had water to your soil. It's for the perfect incubation. Makes because of swell will stay moist during the germination process, and you won't have to water your seeds for the 1st 3 to 4 days. It's also a safe way to make sure you don't under water your plants in that critical germination phase. So I'm going to get for and you're gonna make a mess the first time. But that's OK, because it's only once and you have to worry about it for months. So one before parts of soil. Then we're going to mix one part of water that Okay, once you have that, we can mix it all together. And so you can either use this immediately, or what I like to do is make a bunch make as many as you can use up the whole bag, and that way you have enough for a few months. So the soil is nice and human now, perfect. When I'm ready to get started on, my soil is prepared. I generally wait for the evening right before I'm about to go to bed. I move on to determine the seed quantity again This is not an exact science. And quickly get a feel for how maney sees you actually need If you have to Money seeds, you can always whip out more containers to put them in. And if you don't have extra containers, yuk unjust sprout the seeds instead of growing the most microgreens. So if you're going with aluminum foil pans that are like this three by six inches like this one, you're going to want two teaspoons of small sees like radishes or broccoli and one tablespoon of large seeds like peas or sunflowers. Once you have your seeds just like the sprouting guidelines, you're going to rinse them off. So I like to use my juris broader for this. I'll put my peas in here again. The SDA recommends you rinse them in bleach water. I simply rinse them in a cool, filtered water solution. The choice is yours, so I'm going to rinse them, filter the water, hear them a swirl, all right, and then we're going to soak them overnight. Remember to put twice the volume of water, and we're gonna let those sit out of the light in a dark place for 8 to 12 hours and not more than 24 hours. Otherwise your seeds might die. So there we go, and I'm going to Ben. Good night. See you all in the morning. So in the morning, you're going to drink off the water and give some to your house plants. We have some. Yeah, and you're gonna give these guys another rinse. It will be ready. Food containers. Now, if you realize shoot. I'm not ready. Teoh. Transfer them cause I have to go to work. Then you can keep sprouting these scenes. As long as the roots are less than 1.5 inches long, you're able to transfer them over. The longer they're out, though, the less successful at transfer will be. So you're Caesar rinsed. It's time to fill your containers. So if you want to, you can also add fertiliser. Remember, microgreens needs soil and sunlight because their energy reserves will run out after seven days. You can also grow microgreens hydroponically if you wanted to. But for the purposes of this class for sticking to soil, adding fertilizer is not necessary by any means to grow healthy looking sprouts. What it will do, though, is keep your greens healthier for longer, and it will enhance their growth, and they'll absorb more nutrients if you decide that you want to invest in fertilizer than you want to put compost and or kelp meal or liquid seaweed at the very bottom of your trays . So this is your first step to fill the tray. If you opt for fertilizer when you put the fertilizer at the very bottom of your tray, your microgreens will send their roots straight down looking for nutrients. So when you're filling your container, you want to add on Lee 1.5 inches to two inches of soil. So I'm starting in one of them with a tiny bit of compost and the other one, I'm not going to use any compost. Your two options. So this is my pre prepared soil. I'm going to add one, 22 inches of it to my containers. There we go, and you want to tamp it down just a tiny bit, but really not too much because you don't want the soil to get compacted. You want to make sure that they can establish their roots. Okay, so now it's time to add your seeds. So you want to Sprinkle your seeds evenly on here and you want them to. It's a perfect amount. You can help Utkan spread them out by using your fingers with the pea shoots. It's easy to do this with the radishes. It's a bit more difficult to use your fingers so you can have you can use a spoon. Instead, we're gonna put the radishes on there. Sometimes they get on the lid, Okay, and then this could help you evenly. Spread the radish seeds If you want to, You can tamp them down gently to help them establish their roots. But you don't need to do this. This is optional, so you want your seeds to be touching, not overlapping. And if you want to make different seeds in the same trade, that's fine, too. I just try to put one on one side and the other on the other side, and check that they're harvesting. Times will be more or less similar through trees are almost ready. It's time to put a protective cover on these seeds to make sure that they will germinate successfully. Your protective cover is there to recreate the dark, warm and moist conditions that thes sees would find out in nature. This ensures the perfect germination conditions. So what can you use as a protective cover? Well, you can use a fine layer of sifted soil, but this could get a little messy once the seeds start to Germany. If you use this method that sees tend to dry faster, so you need to water them every single day of the germination process. And you're also better off putting a plastic covering on top of them to make sure they stay warm and don't drag us quickly. It's definitely an option, but I prefer simply putting newspaper or paper towels on them, so I don't have to worry about watering my plants for the 1st 3 to 4 days while I'm germinating. So this is how my recommended protective cover works. You can use soy ink, newspaper or unbleached paper towels, and I reuse this cover and simply let it dry in the sun when I'm done with it. If you're concerned about bacteria, you can sanitize it in a bleach in water mix. The newspaper, in particular, is about a credible, and it's approved for organic gardening. You can also try simple cotton towels. Just make sure to choose a fabric that your seeds won't get caught up in. So take a regular newspaper or paper tell. And with this newspaper method, I like to use newspaper that's folded in about 12 layers of newspaper thick and with a paper towel method is about eight layers thick. So you take your folded paper and you put them in a bowl and you soak them in water and make sure that they really soak up all of that water. And once they're completely soaked, you want said, take them out and press them. It's to make sure that they're not completely drifting, but that they're very moist, so that would be perfect. And I'm going to put them on top of my pea shoots right here. This one, the newspaper I'm gonna put on top. So I'm gonna move this speaking. I can say more. I'm gonna move it and put it on top of my radishes so these guys will stay moist for, as I said, 3 to 4 days. And if you're concerned about your seeds being moist enough, you can go check the paper. And if it starts getting dry, then you would have to re moist in this paper. But it should stay perfectly wet for 3 to 4 days. And when the seeds start to germinate, they'll actually start pushing the newspaper up, which is really neat. And the newspaper won't get in the way of their growth whatsoever. And now you want to store these guys in a relatively warm place in your home. Now, if it's winter and it's really cold in your house, you can use a box like this one and put them in the box and put them in a cupboard somewhere in a warm area. So after about three or four days, you'll come back and you'll take a peek and you'll see that your seeds are pushing up the paper. They're trying to find sunlight. At this point, you can see their first leaves, the coddle Eden's. They're probably quite yellowish at this stage because they haven't been in the sun yet, So at that point, you can take the paper off and place these babies on your window sill. They need to start photo synthesizing and developing chlorophyll. You'll see that over the course of one day, their leaves will turn from yellow to green. Now, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, placing them on a south facing window sill is ideal. However, any other window, except for maybe a north facing window, will be OK. Your greens might struggle to grow a bit, but they will still grow. Now you wait for them to grow for about a week or so. You can even go two weeks or longer. It all depends on what stage you'd like to eat your microgreens at. Also, be aware that colder weather Consignia, Ficken tli slow down the growth of your plants. So after those 1st 3 to 4 days, you want to water your plants daily with a watering can. Morning and night is perfect or just once a day, you can use filtered water or tap water. Do you want to make sure that the soil is moist and not wet To make sure that it's moist enough, just put your finger down the edge of the container to feel the soil and see if it's dry. If you accidentally over watered, you can just tip the container so way too much. It's typical tainer, and the excess water will pour off 12. Harvesting & storing microgreens: greens are two inches tall or more, you can harvest them if you want. I would taste them at different stages of their growth and determine at what stage do you think that they are tastiest and you can harvest them. Then, if you want to taste actual microgreens, you can wait for their true leaves to appear, which could take up to three weeks to harvest them. You want to use sharp scissors so you don't bruise the plants and cut the microgreens right at their base just above the soil. You're going to want to harvest on Lee what you need. If you only need half of your trade to add to your salad, harvest half the tray. Leave the other microgreens to grow further if you harvest them all. The uneaten microgreens will do a lot of their nutrients by the time you're ready to eat vegetables breakdown as soon as they're harvested and the environment that captain can make them lose even more nutrients. If you do need to harvest them and store them, cut them in the early morning when they're full of water and they'll keep longer if you need to harvest in the evening. Be sure to run them under cool water right after harvesting them to store them, put them between damn paper towels and then place them in food storage containers. You can also use green bags or just missed them with some water to keep them moist and put them in the fridge in a container. They'll stay fresh for 3 to 4 days, sometimes longer. Some, like basil, will get damaged faster. 13. Troubleshooting: Sometimes you're sprouting or microgreens. Experience isn't going quite as expected. Let me walk you through some common problems you might encounter at some point in your sprouting life. Let's start with seeds. Sometimes your seeds might not germinate. There could be many reasons for this. Make sure that you soak them for 8 to 12 hours and not over 24 hours. Check to see that your seeds aren't past their growing recommendation date and make sure that there were stored in dry, cool conditions. You can also check the temperature in your home. A cold environment can significantly slow down their growth. Maybe your scenes were hold. If they were, they might have been too damaged to sprout. If you doing them enough time to germinate, sometimes it can take several days. In winter. You can try to return them to this running company. If your spouse look mouldy, do a smell test. If they don't smell, it might not be molded that your senior might be cilia hairs. Instead, those hairs were on the sprouts roots, and they're looking for water, so if you rent the sprouts, the hairs will disappear and reappear a few hours later, with radishes, it's easy to confuse the hairs with mold. If you're sprouts look mouldy and slimy and they smell terrible, that's bad news. Throw them out. I prefer to be cautious and discard them into my compost. I wash my sprout her out extra well. If I have mold problems to try to prevent mold, you could lower the temperature that your sprouts are growing in by pointing, offend at them or putting them in the fridge for several hours, or also putting just less seeds in this broader. If you have a fruit fly problem, you can try to prevent further infestation by using the same three tricks to cool down the temperature of the sprouts. Fruit flies don't like the cold in terms of microgreens. You might find that the seeds aren't growing well or are germinating unevenly. If this is the case, you want to make sure that the quality of the soil are growing in his adequate, that they're not in the shade all day and that the soil isn't too wet or too dry. If you're Michael green stems are thin and weak. They simply aren't getting enough light. They need toe have at least partial son if they're leaves, are yellow or underdeveloped. This is likely due to poor soil quality. If you're microgreens, become mouldy and maybe because your trays were kept too wet, you might also want to increase your air circulation by using a fan or a dehumidifier. Try moving your plants to an area with more light. Sees that don't sprout will mold naturally, and you can remove these from your trade. If you're microgreens are wilting, you can moisten the soil and get the chutes what as well with cold water and put a plastic covering on top of them. Move them to the fridge for a few hours, and when you take them out, take out the plastic covering and check on them. Half a day later, you'll be surprised at how well this works. 14. Weekly sprouting schedule: way, you might be wondering how in the world you're going to stay organized enough to not get only your recommended one cup of sprouts and microgreens a day. But how you're going to get a balanced variety of sprouts, picking and choosing from the five sprouts and microgreens groups that I talked about. So please refer to the continuous sprouting schedule in your instructions document to follow along. For this part, it's explain. This is what I like to do. Get force rotting jars and label them. Jar one is leafy greens door to his legumes. Jar three is grains. Jar for is nuts and seeds. Then get to micro green containers like these three by six inch ones. If you follow this program, it heals eight cups of greens per week, and one cup of Notre scenes every week will get two cups of with the greens, two cups of legumes, two cups of grains, two cups of microgreens and one cup of nuts and seeds. Each week, you're going to rotate. What kind of leafy green legume grain nut and micro green you're growing? You'll fill up your jar or Michael Green containers with the amount of dry seizes indicated in your hand out, and it'll yield exactly the right amount. You have a weekly schedule. Monday's starts aren't one and you're my urine containers. Wednesday's start dark to Friday. Start jars three end for. Repeat the schedule every week and harvest and store as you wish. 15. Recipes!: there are so many delicious recipes you can make with sprouts. We share some of our favorites with you in our instructions documents, so make sure to have a look with my leafy green sprouts and microgreens. In general, I make big salad as a main course or as a side dish. I also love to put sprouts in sandwiches, either with or without lettuce. If I have to. Money sprouts and I'm not sure what to do with them. Or if my microgreens have grown too tall that I love mixing them into a movie like this. It's also a great way to get your kids to eat their greens, blend it up with a banana, and they won't even know that it's there. So good. What spotted like you is my favorite thing to do is sprout beans and eat them on the go for a delicious protein snack. If you have money means responded lentils, you can add them to stir fries at the very end. Remember, even if you want to lightly cook your legumes or grains, sprout them first to boost their nutritional value. One of my top recipes for sprouts sprouted homis. It's just a matter of sprouting the beans for a few days and making your home. It's with those instead of cooked beans. There are lots of ways to eat sprouted grains as well. You could have a bull of sprouted buckwheat for breakfast. You confirm meant your sprouted grains in water and drink it. This is called Raju Black, and it's full of beneficial microbiota. You can also use a dehydrator and make your own SN bread at home from wheat Berries. Then there are nuts and seats. There's a lot of room here to get creative by making nut cheeses, ice creams and nut milks. Before we say goodbye, we're going to make unsweetened almond milk and walk you through how to milk the all names , so to speak. Now, if you live in the United States, your almonds are likely produced unsustainably. They require a lot of water to grow, and they're grown in California, which suffers from severe droughts. Making this milk should be a special treat, not a habit. You'll need two cups of raw organic almonds. They're pricier than you think. 4 to 8 cups of filtered water and a pinch of salt. You'll need a high powered blender to and ideally, a nutbag just like this one. If you don't have one, you can use cheesecloth instead. We're gonna start by rinsing your almonds. You are going to just rinse them regular water, make sure that they're clean. Once you rinse them, they're gonna put them in a pool. Here we go. You're gonna add filtered water to it. Just make sure to add at least twice the amount of water in volume. But these guys are gonna take up a lot of water. Okay, So you're gonna let these guys sit overnight from anywhere from 12 to 24 hours. The longer you let them soak the milky or they're going to be. So after 12 to 24 hours, you magically have you guys that have been soaking for 12 hours in our case. So what do you do? You don't want to use that same water. So you're going to drain off that water that contains. Here we go. We're gonna want to give your mom and brother. Yeah, okay. I have your delicious, beautiful Ahmed, and you're gonna add them to your blender. So in this blender I already have four cups of filtered water. All right, get a little splashy. Everyone okay? We did it. Okay, so now they're in here, and you're gonna blend them. Hey, guys. So since almonds are so expensive for doing this scene and three languages do, please, I'm on Staunton. Marcheline face. It said on 12 has invented some. We got us some houses in the SS, and I know, I know. So we've mixed our almond milk. We're gonna put it through the bag when I'm in order not to let that moment when methadone it in a bowl. Cyanosis. Okay, go. Great job. We went moving drop in three local today. What if Uncle Fred E. Yes. I thought that she I'm not sure. Okay. And now you just let the milk pour out. But it's it a bit. No, they re ocular. Look again in our ways or near the post. So the leftover almonds you have here you can use to make almond flour all you need is a dehydrator like the one back there you need is love. A lot of the rest. The moms complicity he has to their monkey black. The man does on this, but your fast in that moment. Which is it? Is it at them Uncle visits when it said locog You know, whenever singing you wanna use only saw the known is only 10 minutes what she said. 16. Happy Sprouting!: Thank you so much for watching our video on sprouts and microgreens. You hope this is motivated you to start sprouting a home. It's easier than you think. Way hope to see you again for future. Almost cool so you can watch it on whatever language you want. Happy sprouting. I hope you again for future. 17. Bonus: Zero Waste Sprouting: way. When we first filmed this course, we took into account ideas like choosing non GMO organic seeds, repurpose ing items like plastic trays, avoiding plastic packaged sore sprouts, buying certain microgreens seeds in bulk and so on and so forth. But in retrospect, what we didn't focus on sufficiently was plastic free seed packaging or better options for soil packaging or skipping the paper towels even though we were reusing them and eventually composting these and then things like choosing zero waste filters for water and a few other details. So I wanted to address how to make sprouting and growing microgreens as little waste is possible. So let's start with scenes. Most companies sell their organic sprouting seeds in plastic. It's just really hard to get around that when you're buying seeds specifically being sold for sprouting purposes. So how can you avoid this plastic, or can you even avoid it? Well, that'll depend on a few factors. If you live in Europe, there is an option of buying your sprouting seeds from colson zaman dot ch thes coming paper packaging with just a small plastic film for the window. And if you've had a look around at your options where you live, and there's just nothing that's both organic and plastic free. Then the next best option is to buy in larger quantities to lower the overall plastic waste . So instead of getting five small plastic packs of alfalfa, you could get one larger one. No, of course. Don't do this if you don't count on using all of those alfalfa seeds. And I want to point out as well that even if you do get all of your sprouting seeds and plastic, it will still be significantly less plastic volume and weight than if you had just purchased these browns at the grocery store. So there are a few options for getting sprouting seeds plastic free. If you're a gardener, you congratulate and collect your own seeds if you're not a gardener. Another option for some sprouting seeds like lentils, quinoa and garbanzo beans like Behind Me, is to buy organic package free from stores that have bulk sections like whole foods, for example. So, of course, the issue is here that they may be damaged, and you really want to make sure the fully sanitize them before using them. You're you're not guaranteed that they're gonna be pathogen free, and it's unlikely that you would find all varieties of sprouting seeds in bulk. I've never seen our fellow the seeds in bulk, for example. But the Basel UN for packed very way shop here downtown mentioned that they were looking into that possibility. So you never know when it comes to seeds for growing microgreens, it's actually much easier to find them. Plastic free. In fact, high mowing organic seeds cells basically all of its micro green seeds in paper packaging, which can then be either recycled or composted after use. How about seed starting mix for potting mix? So this is the topic that I had been banging my head against the wall about four months. So you don't want to take actual soil from outdoors to grow your microgreens just because you know it's package free soil. Don't do that cause it's not ideal for a cease starting because it literally could cause disease. You don't want to be doing that. And if you make your own compost at home, that's another great plastic free solution. But you don't actually want to be growing your seeds in pure compost, either, So I looked far and wide for organic seed, starting mix or potting. Mix the head either paper packaging or plastic packaging that could be recycled through TerraCycle. So the problem is, if your soil bag from let's say, son Grow has a recycled code number seven on it, and your CD doesn't recycle code seven than basically trash. So I had no luck finding any paper packaging either. And TerraCycle doesn't have any recycling programs with any brand that produces these sort of mixes in plastic packaging currently. But fear not. There is good news if you're a super committed to reducing your waist, even if your soil packaging does not have the terrorist like logo on it. Terracycle still recycle the waste through their zero Waste Boxes program, so you would specifically have toe have to order. They're plastic packaging. Zero waste box, which costs on Lee $81 with what? Yeah, man, it's expensive to recycle stuff that's not easily recyclable. And I know what you're thinking. I'm not gonna pay $81 toe recycle this soil bag. Well, then, you're not a real environmentalist, okay? Obviously, I don't expect you to pay that, but what you can do is get your gardening story and tell them how cool it would be if they offered this service of recycling the plastic bags of soil. And if the manager is eco minded, there's a good chance that they'll jump on that opportunity. And, of course, whether or not you end up recycling your bag of soil, your best bet is to buy a large bag you can keep using and using instead of small multiple baggies. And also you can continue to use that soil. Once you're microgreens are ready to harvest, don't chuck out the soil, save the soil and he just adding supplemental nutrients to it like compost C, which you can also make a home. And compost can also be easily made at home through worm composting or balcony composting. Just remember not to use human or composting to grow your seats. And last year, an expert You may die. How about paper towels and newspapers to grow the seeds at the very start of that process? So, yes, we do reuse the paper afterwards, but it only lasts a few rounds until we need new paper. So what's the solution? Well, I still stand by using newspaper. If the newspaper is going to be wasted anyways, you may as well repurpose it and compost it later. But if you don't have old newspaper readily available, he can also use reusable cloth towels. Just rember to sanitize them between uses and try to get tells that aren't, you know, loosely knit or the sprouts will just hook onto them. So we tell you to filter the water in this class, but we don't get into low waste water filters. Recently, we started using Miyabe. Charcoal filters are made with bamboo charcoal, which is both a renewable resource and compostable, and it has this poorest surface that adds orbs, tap water. So when it's carbonized, it removes chlorine chlorides, phosphorus, ammonia, I told you in nitrogen, chloramine and some pesticides from tap water. And it does not absorb pathogens, though, So if you live in a place where water contains pathogens, then we definitely do not recommend this filter for your sprouting water in terms of the rest of our practices. In this course, it's best user reusable sprouting lid instead of cheese cloth, which is single use, and for your sprout er or your micro green trays. You can see first if what you need is available secondhand or if you can repurpose some plastic containers like we showed you how in our course as well, and in terms of green bags, I personally still use the ones that my mom gave me a night have just made them last for years. But if you want something that eventually won't become trash, then you can check out companies like the swag, which offers reusable bags to keep your produce fresh. I hope you found this class update helpful. Let us know if you have any other questions and in the meantime, happy sprouting. 18. Our Story: Hi, I'm for itself and then routine. And we are the permanent authors from a crafters is an online school that offers courses on environmental topics you wish you had learned about in school growing up, like how to reduce your exposure to toxins in your home, how to care for the environment by reducing your Trash or your waste. And probably most importantly how to cut through the greenwashing BS for MOOC officer was born out of a friendship between myself and we felt we met on a beakers or 9A I2, the plaza in Burma culture that we saw with teaching. And I'm an environmental educator with a background in natural resources management, sustainable development, permaculture and urbanism. And I was teaching this eight week permaculture class there. And we were introducing topics like natural building, worm composting and foraging, and permaculture is an ethical Design System for sustainable human culture. And it was created as a response to Earth's diminishing resources and energy and had never heard of permaculture WHO Divina skew much thoughts to environmental topics. I come from a very different world. I used to work in business management and middle. And when n mess this up, disk key, I need to go out and we had so much in government. It's true the moment Christina step foot in the class, she had this infectious smile and it was just impossible not to get close to her. And she's also this incredibly creative DIY lover. She was constantly coming up with new crafting project. It's really inspiring. Chrysostom, a butcher bless changed, hug you the word. She shared her fat that opened my eyes to environment, that crisis. But noting away that I left me hobbyists, he didn't gorge needs to get out of my comfort zone to find creative solutions to environmental Berlin's until even for positive change. Not for perfection. Whose cell made environmentalist IM Sawyer, people of all backgrounds, as you can see, that's initials promotion for boasted environments are crisis, makes so much slums elicits no going back. And after that class, we decided to combine forces and share our permaculture and crafting skills through online classes that would be available to anyone anywhere in the world. So now we offer courses on growing sprouts and micro greens at home on green cleaning minus the green washing BS on 0 waste living and how to reduce your trash. And following the Zero Waste theme, we also teach about Zero Waste menstruation, stairways, body carrying cosmetics and herbal remedies for common ailments as well. He feels so grey fur further, sponsor first courses on blurring MOOCS, began weights of 11 new ones for you that can fermentation as the Ysom EGL bartending and so much more so thank you so much for being on this adventure with us. We hope that you'll keep enjoying. 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