If you enjoy making recipes involving sprouts, then you might also want to learn a few basics on how to grow sprouts at your own home, so that you can always have a fresh supply of it whether you need it for making a delicious dish, or if you just want to grow it to make your vegetable garden fuller and more appealing.
In this short article, we are going to teach you some of the very basic steps on how to grow sprouts. Please see the details 
The first thing that you have to do is to find seeds. Seeds that will turn into sprouts can be purchased in garden supply stores, greenhouses, or even at your local supermarket. You should only make sure that your seeds are untreated and healthy. Treated seeds are harder to move from its dormancy stage, which will prevent it from sprouting.
When you already have your seeds, you can now soak them. You need to soak your seeds for several hours or until a day in order to move it from dormancy. After that, rinse your seeds. Make sure to rinse it well, because this will promote your seeds to start sprouting.
After rinsing, you will also have to drain it well. Remember, your sprouts can be prone to bacteria or dirt that have accumulated in the puddle, and rinsing it well will prevent the sprouts from failing.
It is also important that your sprouts are able to breathe. This is actually one of the most commonly forgotten aspect when sprouting, which often leads to failure. So make sure that your seeds will have enough air in between washing and draining, in order for them to grow.
If you want to grow sprouts, you can often use two types of sprouting mediums. One is the soil, and one is a damp and moist medium. Either will do, but there are some sprouts that do well in soil, while some do well in a moist medium. You should know this upon doing your research about the sprout that you want to grow, or by checking out the packaging of your seeds.
De-hulling is also a part of growing sprouts, particularly if you are growing brassicas. De-hulling means removing the actual cap of your seeds, in order for them to grow sprouts. However, not all seeds require this, as the caps normally fall off when the sprouts are ready to grow.
Harvesting sprouts is actually easy, as it does not require any resistance when harvesting them from their growing / sprouting mediums. However, upon harvesting, you have to make sure to dry them before storing in order to prevent them from spoiling.
There are also several sprouting equipment that you can purchase from garden supply stores that will allow you to work on your sprouts easier.
Learning how to grow sprouts at home isn’t very hard, it just takes a bit of attention and patience.
image courtesy of dottiemae/flickr
