This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today, I'm on another field trip. I love taking
fieldtrips so much and, you know, we're in the middle of a city here, these warehouse
buildings. We're at a nice unique place. It's actually called gotsprouts. They're website
is gotsprouts.com and we're going to show you how you could even grow food in a warehouse,
industrial warehouse building, and how does that relate to home growing food at your house?
Well, you know, winter is coming up and it'll be here before we know it. We're here in South
Florida, and winter never hits South Florida here. It's always nice in South Florida, but
anyways, the point is winter's coming up and you may not be able to grow in the wintertime
where you live. So, but you could definitely grow in your house, and if they could grow
in an industrial warehouse, you could absolutely grow in your own house, and what that is you
would grow is sprouts. Sprouts are very nutrient dense and really good foods for us. So, we're
going to go into gotsprouts and see how they could support you in growing sprouts and even
if you're too lazy and you don't want to grow your own, they'll even ship it to you overnight.
So, let's go inside. So, let's come inside and check this place out. Alright, so we're
entering the gotsprouts. You can see they sell sprouts. They'll ship them overnight,
you could pick them up here in south Florida. They also sell supplies that allow you to
grow sprouts in your home. So, they have a special, you know, trays here to grow the
sprouts, which are standard nursing trays, but they're a little bit different than the
nursery tray that I have. Many of these flats in my own garden that I use that I get form
nurseries, but most of them have big large holes, which aren't good for growing sprouts.
These ones have the small holes, but if you do have the ones with large holes, usually
what I'll do is just put a piece of newspaper down and the still grow in it, but you can
get the special trays if you want the good special trays to grow, and then they also
have special seeds. So, all the seeds they sell here are organic. So, we have here some
pea greens, and these are ready to be harvested now. Could grow these year-round inside, as
well as these sunflower sprouts here that're probably my favorite, and also the wheatgrass.
You may have heard of wheatgrass, and we're going to show you how to grow wheatgrass today.
It's real simple and real easy. They also sell a sprouted bean mix, which actually you
don't even need to grow in a flat or anything, you just take some seeds and germinate them,
and when they have little tails on there like that, they're ready to be harvested and, you
know, that is considered growing your own food. You're still germinating them, and we
have as special treat. Sean's actually going to show s how to grow the sprouts. So, besides
selling the sprouts, he is dedicated to educating the public on how to grow they're own sprouts
so that everybody could grow their own sprouts in their home, and he's here to assist and
also, you know, if you don't want to, he'll sell you the sprouts. So, he's actually going
to take us in the back, we're going to show you the warehouse, and shoe you how they grow
under fluorescent lights in a warehouse in south Florida it's amazing. Alright, so now
we're walking back in to the warehouse here at gotsprouts, and, check it out, I mean.
This is literally a warehouse. You can see the brick walls on the end there and the big
tall roves and they got some full spectrum florescent lighting, and that's literally
all they're growing under, full spectrum fluorescent lighting. They got a nice air conditioner,
some fans in here to keep the temperature constant, and they got all these sprouts growing
in here. Alright, Sean. So, why don't you tell us here about the warehouse where you're
growing and then also I guess maybe we'll actually, you're going to show us how you
grow, right?
Again, the reason why we picked a storefront we want to grow in here for is because we
want to keep the environment as regulated as possible. Sprouts grow best between 75-80
degrees and to keep them aerated so you keep the mold and mildew at the very minimum levels.
So, that's why we decided to do this. It's very simple with full spectrum lighting and
as long as you keep the airflow going well, it's really a great place to do it. So, come
on back.
So, we're in the warehouse at gotsprouts, and they have just racks and racks and racks
of sprouts growing. You can see a bunch behind me. We have sunflower greens and wheatgrass
and like walking in here reminds me of like walking in a greenhouse. I'd love to just
set up a cot and just sleep in here for the oxygen that the sprouts, I mean.
I've done that.
It's so cool. They got a bathroom. Hey, you want to rent out space?
We got a lot of space.
They got the full spectrum lighting in here, I can get a tan, too, and.
Not so much.
So, anyways, today, Sean's going to share the trade secrets of growing sprouts with
us and that you could do it in your own home, although, if you don't want to do it he is
available and they'll ship them to you overnight, you know, but, yes, he's going to show us
how to grow wheatgrass. It's very simple and very easy, and, you know, you could buy the
wheatgrass seeds form him, and he has the special variety, or you could actually go
down to your local health food store and get the hardened winter wheat, although you may
have more problems with it sprouting 'cause that's not a certified sprouting seed, and
there is a difference between sprouting seeds and just general seeds that you can actually
use to grind up and, you know, make your breads, for sure. So, let's go ahead and turn it over
to Sean and he's going to show us how to grow some wheatgrass.
Alright, John, appreciate it. One of the things I do have to tell you is the same thing that
you just brought up. The seed is the most important thing that you're going to be working
with. Get a nice, organic seed, wherever you can find. Wherever you are in the US, find
a good organic seed. That's what we have here at got sprouts. That'll take care of any other
problem that you have. If you run into mold, you run into anything else, it's usually because
of the seed. So, that's the first thing that you want to start with. We have a very, very
fine, organic, hard bread, winter wheat seed we offer you at gotsprouts. Definitely would
recommend, if you can't find any other seeds in your area, give us a call, we'll take care
of you. This is just a really quick way to grow sprouts. It's not really hard to do,
especially if you're in an apartment or if you're in a home. Start off with a couple
different trays just to show you the different trays that we have and what it'll grow for
you. The first one here is what they calla a 10X10 or a 10X11. It's a square tray, it's
got small little holes in it on the bottom here, which is pretty easy to use. This will
grow you about a pound of wheatgrass when it's all said and done for it. So, that's
something to keep in mind, and we have the 10X20 trays over here, and we have the holes,
ones with the holes, so it aerates. Great for the water drain to go through, and there's
also the ones with no holes, and this is great if you're growing in an apartment or a home,
and you can fit 2 of these trays, the 10X10, you can fit 2 of them so you can grow 2 pounds
of product. Maybe you want to grow wheatgrass, maybe you want to grow sunflower. That's fantastic.
Also, if you want to grow the larger trays, if you just grow wheatgrass, like we're going
to be doing in a few minutes, you can grow a 2-pound tray, which is a 10X20.
So, that's like it won't leak, right? You can water it and just kind of take that out
and pour it out so it doesn't leak all over your kitchen floor, right?
Just like if you have your own little plant at home. Just make sure you water it really
good at night and it should be fine. Next thing we have is a large grass tray. These
are 17X17's. These'll grow up to about 3 or 4 pounds of wheatgrass for you, and obviously
more than that in sunflower. Sunflower weighs a little bit more. So, those are the different
trays you can get. Anything'll work if you have a tray. A takeout tray, poke some holes
in the bottom, that'll work, too. Anything you can think of to do it makes it a whole
lot simpler.
Cafeteria trays work really well, you know. They're not quite as deep, but they'll still
work in a cinch.
So, let me show you just basically what we do here at gotsprouts on a daily basis. We
do a lot of this stuff. You want to find a good rich organic soil. It's also very important
to try to stay away form this stuff with miracle grow and things like that. They're great soils,
but I wouldn't recommend them for growing food and what you're going to be doing here.
You want to put about 2 inches of dirt in the bottom of the tray, then take one of these
trays. This is a secret, you guys ready? Put it on top, pack it in there really good, nice
and tight. So, that's make a nice little what they call a mack, or a pad, if you want. So,
nice really tight dirt there for you. Then you're going to take your wheatgrass seed
and you're going to soak it overnight, and this is the easy way to do it-
So, how long? 12 hours?
8-12 hours-
And guess what they use to soak their wheatgrass in? Long time viewers will know. A 5-gallon
bucket.
Works well. I haven't found anything that's more perfect than that, but we keep looking
for stuff, but that's an easy way to do it. If you're at home, a pitcher. A really great
idea you can do is take a plastic pitcher, drill some holes in the bottom of it, out
it in a solid pitcher in the top of it, put the wheatgrass in it, soak it overnight, the
next morning, pull that up, and it'll work as a strainer for you so you never have to
touch the seeds. Pull them out, rinse really good, and again, once you're done soaking
this overnight, it's actually still soaking, you can see how it's getting a little bit
larger for you. Once it absorbs all that water, you want to rinse it out really good for about
4-5 hours after you've done the rinsing.
So, you rinse it for 4 or 5 hours? You rinse it and then let it sit?
Oh, you rinse it.
So, you rinse it really good and then let it sit for 4-5 hours?
Correct, and then what we normally do is we rinse out 2 or 3 times during the day so you
can make sure it's really well rinsed. If you're into the alkaline water and things
like that, want to know a little trick you can do? Take some acidic water, 2.5 will work
really well, it's kills all the bacteria and everything. That's a good way to clean all
your seed before you even lay it out, so it's just ready, but anyway you take, so you got
your wheatgrass. So, this is the thing that guys really like it, like to get your hands
dirty. So, this is the fun part. First of all, we've got our dirt. We've already laid
that out for us. Our hands are still clean. Next thing we're going to do is we're going
to take our wheatgrass. Usually about a cup and half will do in a 10X20 tray. We're going
to use ½ a cup here, and you just pour vigorously, it doesn't matter. I've had people actually
will take one seed at a time and I said, 'you're killing me.' So, you just want to cover the
soil is what you're looking to do and you don't really want to overlap the seed too
much and you just want to sprinkle that out a little bit so you can see what we're doing
here and you just want to cover that out really fine. Try to cover up all the dirt as much
as you can. For the 10X10 trays, you're probably going to use a half a pound of seed. For the
10X20, you're going to use ¾ pound, and for the 17X17 tray you're going to use a whole
pound of seed.
So, is that like, pre-soaked weight that you start with? 'Cause when you soak them they
start to weigh more.
Pre soaked. So, you want to lay them out nice. See how I lay them out nice and easy?
I can barely see any soil, but they're not overlapping. You just get them so you can't
see the soil, right?
It's all about love here. So, this is basically what it looks like. You're going to have it
nice and covered there for you, and then what you want to do after that is you wan tot rick
them like their underground. So, what we do is we rinse them out really good at this point.
So, nice and wet, they're getting settled into their new home here in the dirt, and
then you want to take a tray and you want to put it over the top of here, and this'll
actually trick the seed like they're underground, and it also keeps them moist. In climate areas,
I'd say like Florida, if you're growing it in house or if you're growing it in an apartment
or anywhere else that has air-conditioning, you want to water this heavy in the morning
and you want to spritz it at night just to keep it moist at all times. The next phase
you're going to be looking at is when the seed actually starts to push this tray up
and you can see the grass. More of the grass is yellow, and you want to take the tray and
flip it over. Once it's pushed up that, and this will grow up another 2 or 3 days until
it pushes this up, and then when you take this off here, your grass will be about his
tall, it'll be yellow, but once it starts greening up and in 5-7 days, it'll grow up
to be about 7 or 8 inches. So, you really get a really great harvest of your wheatgrass,
especially if you've got a great seed. You're really going to get some juicy wheatgrass,
when you actually harvest it, you relooking for what they call the jointing stage. I don't
know if I have any here. That's when the second leaf is just coming off the first grass blade,
and as soon as that comes off, you want to cut the entire tray, put it in a Ziploc bag,
or a green bag is really good to do, and put it in the refrigerator. That'll last you about
7-10 days. If you're doing 2 ounces of wheatgrass, you'll go through that in a week. So, you'll
have it well gone before you've finished it, but that's kind of the whole simple process
of doing wheatgrass.
Alright. That sounds real simple, real easy. So, how much wheatgrass juice would this yield?
A 10X10 tray would give you about a pound, so you're looking at 10-12 ounces. Of course,
it depends on your juicer.
Awesome, great, so, wheatgrass is often used to juice because it is a very fibrous, so,
you can also take it and also chew it, like, you know for a while, like a cow. Pretend
you're a cow, but otherwise, this same technique, you could grow...
You can grow pea greens-
Pea greens, sunflower, same exact way. So, just substitute sunflower for the same exact
thing, right? The same thing with putting that over there and then flipping it over
and?
Sunflower's a little bit different. That's a tricky animal there, but sunflower's a little
bit different. You want to put a little more weight on this and may fill another tray full
of dirt or you might want to put a book on it or a brick or whatver'll work for you to
put some pressure on it, but sunflower seeds are so strong that if you stand on that tray,
if you stood on it for 24 hours, eventually they'll push you up. That's how strong these
things grow. So, vibrance is what you look for. You want a nice good juicing seed and
juicing sprout when you're done.
Alright, very good.
I was telling a funny story the other day that you're telling me when you're chewing
on grass, then working late nights a few times here at the green house and I'll be chewing
on wheatgrass, I'll go home and I can't sleep and my wife goes, 'what have you been doing?
How come you can't sleep? Have you been drinking coffee or something?' and I go, 'no, I don't
drink coffee.' And she goes, 'what?' but I've been chewing on wheatgrass the whole night,
and you can't sleep, you're ready to go. There's a lot of oxygen going to your body and that's
why we do it.
Sprouts are definitely good stuff, whether you're going to, you know, chew on them, juice
them, eat them in your salad, you know, how ever you get them in, it's another thing that
you could grow in your house, whether you have a warehouse, a regular house, a townhouse,
or even and apartment, you could grow sprouts in your house and grow your own food. Take
that step, especially in the wintertime because it's gong to be here before we know it and
most people can't grow year-round. Okay, so, I hope you've enjoyed the time here today
at gotsprouts, and, you know, I have a whole bunch of sunflower greens with me and I was
going to say, 'hey, got sprouts?' but I was just kidding, but anyways, I had fun here
and I'm grateful for Sean for showing us around, you know. Once again, if you need to buy some
seeds or want to learn more about growing sprouts, you can visit their website, gotsprouts.com.
They have a really cool DVD that either is out or is going to be out soon that takes
you through the process even more step-by-step than what we did just here. That was the basic
introductory course to get you up and growing as fast as you can, but they have lots of
other accessory seeds and they'll even ship you the fresh sprouts if you don't want to
grow them yourself. So, once again, this is John Kohler, with growingyourgreens.com and
keep on growing and keep on growing some sprouts. They're good stuff.