Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Dreaming of Gardening

Yesterday evening I was over at my parents for a little while and Dad and I had fun pouring over the seed catalog (Fedco Seeds) and put together our joint order. It will be fun to get the seeds, plant the varieties inside that need an early start and then get to plant the others in the lovely dirt in the garden. I am looking forward to gardening again. It is so much fun to plant a little tiny seed and then watch and wait for God to make a beautiful plant come up. After that comes the joy of eating fresh from the garden food and then preserving all the extras for the winter. What fun!!
If you are dreaming of gardening like I am but also have a long time to wait may I suggest making sprouts. Sprouts are so very easy to make, are very inexpensive, are healthy and give you the fun of watching something grow.
This picture is of some alfalfa sprouts that I made. These are wonderful in salads and in sandwiches. You can also make bean sprouts, mung beans are popular and I recently tried a mix of beans to sprout which was good. To make sprouts you simply have to soak the seeds for a while (overnight works well) and then drain them, keep them in a container where the can get air and then rinse them around twice a day until they reach the desired size. For a very nice article on the health benefits and good directions on making them, go here.
Today for lunch we enjoyed fresh homemade bread (made from fresh ground whole wheat, rye and bean flour, oatmeal, flax and pumpkin) with cream cheese, sunflower seeds and sprouts on top. We also had some home canned applesauce. I love being able to have some healthy homemade meals.

Are you dreaming of gardening? Do you ever make sprouts? How do you like to use them? Tell me what you think!!

3 comments:

Angie said...

JR and I were dreaming of our garden today we were in WM eyeballing seeds and figuring out what we would like to plant this season. I have a question too. Do you need to start tomatoes inside to get decent ones? Where do you get the sprouts from to make them. I always love them when you get them off the buffet at restaurants. That would be so nice. I don't have much sun where we garden right now so I need to plant stuff that needs low sun! Any ideas?

All in a Day said...

That looks really good. A friend gave me some sprout lids but I haven't used them.

Abbi said...

I got the seeds for sprouting at our health food store. I am not sure if regular grocery stores carry them or not, I kind of doubt it.
For tomatoes it does work best if you start them inside. (especially up here in the north.) For low sun - that can be hard. Lettuce, peas and other cool crops do decently. Others can grow as well but most vegies like sun.

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