How to Grow Sunflower Sprouts: Easy, Fun, Delicious, Free

 

 Some years ago, I went to Casa Nueva in Athens, Ohio, with my friend Mimi. Mimi knows all the best things in Athens. "I always order this salad, just for the sunflower sprouts," she enthused. I love sunflower sprouts."
Of course, I ordered the same salad, and plowed into a big pile of delicate sprouts. I adore them, too. I could eat them every day.

"Why don't I sprout sunflowers?" I mused aloud.

"I used to do it, all the time," Mimi replied. "When we were all living in a group house, you know." I smiled. I could see the scene. Buncha longhair musicians, growin' their own sprouts, eatin' government tofu.

That was all the encouragement I needed. I went home and started experimenting. First, I went to the store and bought organic sunflower hearts for snacking, thinking that would get me the cleanest sprout. I put them on damp paper towels to see if they'd grow. And they sat there, grew mold and rotted. Rats!!

I'm not sure, but they may have been heat-treated. They may have been labeled organic, but those seeds were dead. Come to think of it, hulled sunflower seeds taste dead to me. Back to the drawing board.

I went out to the garage and got a couple handfuls of black oil sunflower seeds from the wild bird seed bin. I put about an inch of vermiculite in a shallow plant saucer, pressed the seeds into it, watered and voila! A day later they were starting to sprout. Sunflowers sprout and grow at a dizzying pace. You can have edible sprouts within a week.

Nowadays, I use clean Pro-Mix potting soil. I press the seeds into about an inch of soil, cover them lightly with more soil,  and keep the soil moist but not inundated, as the big plant saucer has no drainage holes. Within a week, I'm harvesting delicious sunflower sprouts.

However,  I have to grow them indoors. The chipmunks get them immediately, even on the top shelf of a baker's rack.

 

Who, me? 

With the last batch, I thought I'd outsmart the chipmunks, so I put my saucers on 3' high pedestals outside, in the open, with nothing a chipmunk could jump from nearby. The next morning, every single sunflower seed had been dug out. No chipmunk can get on a 3' pedestal, and a bird won't dig. Chipmunks climb very well, but they can't jump for crap. I could only conclude that a flying squirrel had found them in the night, because they were fine at sundown and gone in the morning. I got a good laugh out of that. It's always somethin' around this place!

The perp. Taken on my back deck railing. Gawww I love flying squirrels.

Ain't no stopping a flying squirrel. It's an honor to have them clean me out. I pray they never get a taste for the Achimenes rhizomes the chipmunks love so much, because I'm really screwed then. My chipmunk-proof growing table will do me no good at all. Please, little hanky squirrels, no.

 I gave up entirely trying to grow them outdoors, and I'm producing them in the living room now, next to the deck door, where they'll get some light. Hey. That's why they call it a living room. Mine is anything but formal.

 

To harvest, I use a scissors to cut them off at soil level.

 

 

 I like to harvest them just after they cast off their seed shells, and before the first true leaves appear. 

Phoebe and I love to sit and twiddle off the seed shells, but if you wait a few days, they'll cast them off naturally.

Once you've harvested them, there might be a modest second wave of sprouts, but I'll compost these sad little stumps today and start over with fresh soil. I do hate cutting off seedlings; it feels wrong to me.  But I get over it because I love eating them! YUM!

 

Being alive, sunflower sprouts keep beautifully in a Ziploc in the fridge, and are fabulous on salads and BLT's. And live sprouts are the best, most satisfying, healthy snack ever!  

I've held onto this post long enough to show you the second wave. Here's the second cohort, photo taken August 4--only three days after planting. They were ready to harvest by Aug. 6.  I used even less soil than last time--barely an inch. And I put more seeds in, almost covering the soil with them.

 

 I can tell you that you can't re-use the soil, because when you upend it to dump it, you find it's a solid living mass of white roots from all those beheaded seedlings. So dump it, wash the saucer and start with fresh soil. 

Like container-grown lettuce, (my other obsession) sunflower sprouts are a fabulous free food you can grow year-round. You don't need to live in the country or even need to have a garden to grow them.  You don't even have to have a sunny window. Any window will do. Heck, they'd sprout in total darkness. Do it! Homegrown is always way better than anything you could buy. 

Tower room lettuce, Earth Day 2018. Alive, clean, salmonella free. And so much better than storebought. Now this, you do need sun to grow. But sunflower sprouts, anyone can grow, anywhere.

 

 This has been a PSA from Indigo Hill, where we know that all the best things in life are free.

What's for Dinner in the Vegetable Garden? Everything!

In the vegetable garden, the first two rows of beans are sighing their last. The second two rows are just kicking in. Oh huzzah! My goal was to have beans all summer long. That's my goal every summer, but it's always too dry to pull it off. Not this year! I'm so excited to pick them tonight. Nothing like a tender snap bean from the garden, steamed, with butter and salt. I'm drooling as I write. 

I plant a mix of Royal Burgundy, Brittle Wax and Blue Lake so it makes a beautiful sight in the garden trug. I got so carried away I soaked and planted two more rows on August 1. Maybe we'll have an extended warm fall like last year, when I was photographing morning glories in November. I can dream. And what's the worst that can happen? They freeze before they bear. I can take a risk like that, give 100 dry beans to the cause of having fresh snap beans to eat in October. 

I learned a valuable lesson last year when I planted four rows of beans at once. Picking became a chore, and we barely were able to eat them all before they got so big they had to be stewed with bacon. And then when they were all done I missed them, but I didn't miss picking them! Good problem to have, but I'm much happier with two rows of about 70 plants total, followed about three weeks later by another two rows coming in. I'm not a canner any more. I believe in gorging when they're in, and giving away what you can't eat yourself. So far, we're keeping up!

Just behind the beans...

I planted too many Sungold tomatoes and not enough slicers this year. I was all fired up about Kumatos, a tasty little brown tomato, so I saved some seed from some I bought in the grocery store. They're a disappointment, splitting with all the rain and not getting much bigger than a squash ball. The Sungolds aren't all that happy with the cool rainy year, but they're putting out gobs of little sugar bombs. Can't complain! Stewed, fresh, in stir-fries, quiches, soups, I love 'em beyond saying. 

That was my big smile. This is my thoughtful, author jacket look. Where is my meershaum pipe?

I broke down and bought a bunch of glads this spring after losing mine to disease and I don't know what all. They've been such a joy! I can't wait to see how big the bulbs grew when I dig them this fall. Some people don't like digging bulbs. I love it. It's like finding buried treasure. And it kind of beats winter back to pull these freely multiplying jewels out of the soil in November and dream about next June, wondering what colors you'll get. "Blue Moon" mix has been spectacular. 

I'm done hearing about how much people hate glads because they remind them of funerals. Bla bla bla. Tell me something new, something I haven't heard a hundred times.  I'll admit this is a hot button for me because I had a landlady once who scoffed at my taste in flowers and told me why she hated glads oh, about twenty times. As I listened silently to her monologue, I resolved to plant two more rows of them the next spring. 

 Remember, they're called glads!

I've never had a violet like this one. 

Still hatin' on 'em?

And the fresh lavender (Paradise Purple, as garden writer Thalassa Cruso called it, because she contended that all the plants in Paradise started out this color) is such a great compliment to the lime-green bean leaves. Growing glads amongst the vegetables is one of my favorite things to do. They take so little room and they make going out to pick such a pleasure.

Mm, mm. Good.  Happy. Anything but funereal. Besides, they're from South Africa, like about 75% of all the coolest plants on the planet.

Love this sunflower covering her face. 

This same blossom is now hanging down like a showerhead, heavy with seed, and the goldfinches and cardinals have started in on it. 

I haven't grown ornamental sunflowers for years. Oh what fun they are!! Here's Velvet Queen.

Now that's a plant that takes as much room as you'll give it, so I'm glad I planted only a few. The rabbits got all the ones I tried to plant in the heirloom garden where I could see them from the studio. The only ones that survived are inside the 9' tall Jurassic Garden enclosure. 

This is Lemon Queen. Well named! Sunflowers take a lot of room, but they make me and the cardinals, house finches and goldfinches so happy.