Microgreens

Sprouts are eaten root and all. A Microgreen's roots are buried in something (soil or some other moisture holding medium) - so we don't eat their roots. Microgreens are simply; a plant which grows vertically and which we harvest by cutting just above the medium upon which we planted them.

Some of these seeds form gelatin sacks - they are called mucilaginous. Those seeds will never sprout in a conventional sprouter using common sprouting methods. We are experimenting with alternative methods to sprout mucilaginous seeds - and we will certainly share them with you, if and when we establish a consistent technique. Mucilaginous seeds store water around themselves, which is a totally awesome trick in nature - but makes a slippery mess in a normal Sprouter, but they do make great Microgreens.

Any tiny seed; (alfalfa, clover, broccoli, arugula, cabbage, cress, radish.....) will produce such a plant if grown in this manner, but we don't list them all here, we just list the ones most commonly grown as Microgreens - but - feel free - try any seed. Experiment!

We were growing Microgreens in the early 1990s. Virtually nobody was interested in them back then, so we focused on our sprout business (which of course also included Grass and big Greens, like Sunflower Greens and Pea Shoots). Over the years, Micros have grown to be very popular. Since we never spent a lot of time growing them due to our customer's lack of interest, and our immersion in all things sprout, we fell behind in this field. We have been trying to make up for lost time, and have been working with a huge variety of seeds in the recent years, looking for those that will perform well as Micros, and searching for ingredients for a mix we can offer to you. Along the way we have learned a whole lot about Microgreens. Our offerings are vastly improved, and our instructions will take you to the brink of gardening. Of all our new offerings, we are most proud of our mix - Bruno's Indoor Garden. We have never had to spend so long working up a combination of seeds. It took us years - literally - to get what we were looking for. As proud as we are of Bruno's Indoor Garden, we are prouder still of our new instructions for growing Microgreens. We feel like we're on the verge of bridging the gap between kitchen and garden. We are having so much fun!

Among the seeds we have been working with are; many varieties of lettuce, kohlrabi, orach, basil, turnip, and carrot, as well as a wide assortment of mustards. Some of these made their way into Bruno's Indoor Garden, others are available solo, and some are still being experimented with. We expect to have more mixes as well as straight seed offerings, in the future.

As almost all of these seeds are hard to find from organic sources, and are very expensive - we can not stock large quantities. For those reasons several of the items on this page are offered by the ¼ or ½ pound. We determined many years ago that selling fractional pounds of our sprouting seeds did not work financially. We are a business after all, and to our way of thinking, Sproutpeople is one of our children. It is a living organism. The foremost thing is survival. Please accept our choices. If we ever find it workable to offer fractional pounds of other seeds, we will. Another reason why it makes sense here is that our newest instructions require a fraction of the seed required by more traditional Microgreens instructions, so a ¼ or ½ pound will go a long way - if you choose to grow as we suggest.

Have fun growing these, and educating yourself. This is cutting edge stuff in Sproutville.