Spring seedling protection

After the warm spell a few weeks back, Nature has emphatically reminded us that frost will threaten Chicago well into May. Blankets hopefully stowed away in closets have been pulled back out and spread once again across the bed. I recycled my milk gallon "cloches" during the early 80 degree weather, only to spend a hasty evening with a box cutter this past weekend, fashioning more.

This is not to say the garden has suffered. The peas, spinach and other cold-weather greens (mizuna, mustard, kale, chard) are thriving, but not yet at harvest stage. The herb garden is almost lush, and I can add tarragon, chives, thyme and oregano to my dinners with renewed culinary abandon. The first flush of asparagus is over, and I am waiting for another round of spears. The first of the strawberries are poking out of faded blossoms, and the rhubarb is looking almost prehistoric in size. But how have some of my other spring seedlings fared, those both naked and protected? Here is a photo update of my various experiments.

1. Cold frame lettuce: I sowed lettuce "tom thumb" on March 6th in both the cold frame and in a bed nearby, unprotected. After 6 weeks, there is a marked difference in the size of the seedlings - I didn't have a ruler, so I am using my size-11 foot for reference.

We have already thinned out the cold frame lettuce above for an early spring salad.

This unprotected lettuce has barely passed "microgreen" stage.

2. Store-bought vs DIY wall-o-water for tomatoes: As I posted a few weeks back, I set out two very small sweet 100 seedlings, with barely one set of true leaves. One went into a 2L pop-bottle fort and the other into a purchased Burpee brand wall-o-water. It pains my DIY aesthetic to report this, but the wall-o-water is vastly superior (and I even cheated and gave the DIY seedling a slightly sunnier spot!).

The amusing lesson in all of this, however, is that the most developed tomato seedling is the one I have left out to the elements:

Of course, this is an Early Girl, not a Sweet 100, so maybe she is just living up to her name. Her foliage is denser, her stems thicker. Lesson: if I am that committed to having home-grown tomatoes on the 4th of July table, perhaps time would be better spent growing earlier varieties, rather than coaxing mid-to-late season varieties into early harvests.

I have also noticed that my almost completely neglected wintersown tomatoes are rapidly catching up to my coddled sweet 100 seedlings. They too have thicker stems and denser foliage. Maybe all the indoor-start-hand-wringing is for nothing, and I should wintersow everything and be done with it. This is probably the sensible plan, and one that makes sense given my limited time. But then what would I fuss over in the waning weeks of winter? What would I do if I had no seedlings to run out and cover with homemade cloches? Why garden if you don't want to take pains, foolish though they may be?

Rhubarb and ... tomatoes?

Up came the rhubarb this weekend. Already I feel oppressed by the looming harvest, and I am down to just one plant this year. I always make a pie or cobbler, maybe a fancy cocktail like a Rhubarb Collins, and then I scratch my head. There are plenty of quick bread and muffin recipes out there, but my family doesn't eat a lot of sweet baked goods. Orangette recently posted a roasted rhubarb recipe, so I may give that a whirl, though it looks fairly similar to several stewed rhubarb recipes I have made in years past. Unfortunately, these recipes were lauded mostly for the amount of whipped cream or creme fraiche I piled on top of the unsightly rhubarb melange. I could can the rhubarb, but we are still trying to eat down the other sweet preserves I put up in the fall....pickles go much more quickly at our house. This pickle idea got me thinking and with a quick google, I have found my recipe for 2010: rhubarb pickles. I will report back if they are worthy for the recipe file.

So why do I grow rhubarb? Mainly because of the season: aside from asparagus and radishes, this is a reliable early harvest in my zone. I like the color, and the plant does well in a forgotten part-sun location behind the grape arbor. It also chafes me to see rhubarb for sale at local supermarkets for ridiculous sums....$5.99 a pound? Are you kidding? This plant requires little besides letting it alone, and not harvesting too many stalks all at once. In the end, I always end up foisting off the extra rhubarb on the poor souls who have expressed modest interest in my gardening endeavors. The unsolicited stalks are just a foretaste of the zucchini feast to come, my dearies.

Speaking of summer harvests, my early tomato trial has begun! I put out three seedlings this weekend, one under a wall-o-water, one inside a DIY ring of 2L pop bottles, and one out in the elements. This is a flawed study, as a majority of my tomato seedlings suffered irreparable damage while I was off gallivanting in Paris. Ideally, the plants in my experiment would all be of the same variety, but currently I only have two sweet 100's and one early girl to play with. I left the early girl out in the elements, to see if she lives up to her name. I have another round of tomatoes started in my greenhouse, just in case none of these experimental plants works out. With opalkas and sungolds added to the mix, we will, as per usual, have too many tomatoes (see above discussion on foisting off harvests).

Finally, I noticed yesterday that my wintersown tomato seed is up! Pretty early, likely secondary to to the freakish warm weather we've been having. Is this a sign that my experiment is going to do well? They are peiping chieh tomatoes sent by the wintersown lady, Trudi. I have been web searching for taste descriptions of this seed, as I had never heard of it until Trudi sent a package to me this winter. I found several references attesting that it is a good cropper (sigh) and an ominous post from Trudi herself on gardenweb about how they taste delicious with mayonnaise. What doesn't taste delicious with mayonnaise? If this is all that can be said about the taste of this variety, should I be worried?

Spring has sprung!

Chicago is cruel in early Spring. We usually get a brief, honeyed taste of summer followed by the return of winter weather. This year is no exception: my city is currently basking in run of beautifully warm days. We are, however, facing some dips into the 20's this weekend, as well as possible snow and freezing rain. Today I could garden barefoot, wearing just a T-shirt, though the breezes still have a bit of a chill in them. The crocus bulbs came up in my lawn - could there be a sweeter harbinger of the coming season?

My plucky radishes are up, as is the wintersown mizuna.

Hopefully the seedlings will make it through the weekend chill. I will be out of town for the next week, so I won't be able to helicopter-parent them. If they all die, I have plenty of seeds to resow. My husband's parents will be babysitting and house sitting for us, and my father-in-law has more than once battled the elements in his own garden. Though he is not a vegetable gardener, he has coddled many a flower and shrub. I likely leave my seedlings in more careful hands than mine.

I take leave of the homestead with a sigh of satisfaction for, despite endless delays and permit dramas, the porch project has been completed. It was not without casualties -- the March mud combined with a week of weight from the demolition debris wrought havoc on my front bed.

The peonies had started to break through the soil prior to the project's start. They look worse for the wear, but peonies are tough old plants, so I am hopeful about their long-term prognosis.

The roses are through, but they were straggly and diseased, so I bid them adieu with a light heart. Upon my return, I will face the rebuilding of the bed. I am going to put in some perennials, start training vines and perhaps purchase a shrub or two. I will then fill in the gaping holes of this rebuilding season with annual cottage garden flowers. But who knows? I am going to Paris, so maybe I will find some garden inspiration there....perhaps I will find a small city garden or two that I can replicate on the west side of Chicago. Until then, I wish you happy gardening and a few more days like this one to get you outside and digging.

Seed experiments

One of the pleasures of tending a very small garden space is the surplus of seeds I face each season. Even half of one packet of tomato or carrot seeds could likely cover most of my garden real estate. There are a few companies I've found who sell small "sampler" amounts of seeds, meaning ten to twenty, rather than hundreds. But my favorite companies -- Seed Savers, Baker Creek, Renee's, Pinetree, Territorial -- all send generous amounts for but a few dollars. I have given away at least half of my volume of seeds and swapped others, though with a swap comes more seeds. Right now I estimate I have more than 50 seed packets, but most have been depleted to a third of their original volume. This still leaves me with too many seeds for my space....so what to do? Some of the cool weather crops will be doubly used -- this spring and on the tail end of the summer, so I likely have a good amount for that. The thrifty person in me tells me to save, save, save for 2011 and I likely will. But I love to buy new seeds, it is one of my few winter pleasures! I can't be super thrifty and save everything -- I refuse to sacrifice the small cold weather happiness of repleting my stores.

I have decided to run some seed experiments instead, which feels like profligate seed-spending, until I realize they would likely just get stashed in a ziploc for a year, losing viability. I am hoping the experiments will not only build my skills, but also give insight in to new ways that I can stretch the garden season. Here are some of the projects I am trying for the first time:

• Earlier starts: As soon as the chives came up, I put radish, carrots and beets into the ground. I am not sure they will germinate or survive in this cold, dank weather. If they germinate, added bonus. If not, I will just sow them again in a few weeks as I normally would.


• Cold frame sowing: I sowed lettuce, sorrel, chard and kale under the cold frame, after letting it warm up the soil beneath the glass for a few days. As an added experiment, I sowed the same seed outside of the cold frame. So far, just the lettuce has germinated, and the cold-frame seed beat the outdoor sown seed by one day. The difference may come not in germination, but in survival, especially as we are facing nightly low 30's this week.


• Greenhouse protection: I started kale, lettuce and and scallion flats indoors 4 weeks ago. I put half of each flat outside in my new mini-greenhouse and kept half the flats in my sunniest window. I didn't harden off the seedlings at all -- I probably should have brought them in overnight for the first week, but I got lazy. Despite the cold, gray days and frosty nights, the outdoor seedlings are doing much better than the indoor ones -- they are sturdier and less leggy. I have no more space under my grow light, so it might be unfair to compare legginess given that the indoor seedlings get just a window.

• Wintersowing: I've posted about this before...I wintersowed flowers, greens and tomatoes. So far the mizuna and the rose mallow have popped up. I think I may see signs of life with the red columbine as well. The tomatoes are just sitting there...I am most skeptical about them, but the wintersowing website is pretty enthusiastic about this practice, so I will prepare to be amazed when they pop up.


• Wall-o-water vs. soda bottles: I started three tomato seedlings very early, February 28th to be exact. On April 1st, one will go into a wall-o-water, one will go into a fort made of 2L pop bottles (DIY wall-o-water), and one I will just stick in the ground. I based the start and transplant dates on recommendations from a Wicker Park seed guru who hosted a seed starting workshop in his home. He claimed those dates (actually, February 28th and March 28th, respectively) gave him the earliest tomatoes on the block. I fully expect the exposed plant to tank, but that's part of the experiment. I am starting a later round to replace the early plants if they don't survive.

• Chitting: I'm chitting peas, spinach and carrots for the first time - pictured above. To chit, you basically you germinate the seeds indoors on paper towels and just as soon as they pop open you stick them in the ground. Not only does this help seeds with touchy germination needs (i.e. carrots), but also it lets you get peas and spinach in the ground early. John Seymour, in his book The New Self-Sufficient Gardener, points out that chitting helps cut the time that tasty little pea seeds lie in the ground, available as a bird snack. What's stopping a bird from eating a tasty sprouted pea? Anyway, he swears by it.

I will post updates of these projects as they progress, if even one works, all this fussing will be a rousing success! Here's to a seed surplus! Why not spend down some of your garden wealth in the name of science?

Tomato experiment

Last year, two men at work were locked in a no-holds-barred race to have the first tomato of the season. Every day they discussed at length the walls-o-water, the cloches, the coddling. I found it all a bit tiring. I felt this macho race to be first had little point, since shortly we would all be up to our necks in warm-season crops, with coworkers carefully avoiding us lest they be handed another bag of cherry tomatoes or zucchini. I employed none of my colleagues' soil-warming techniques and wound up only a few weeks behind them....in the mean time, I had radishes.

I'm sure botanic journals are bursting with scientific reports on various approaches to starting tomato plants on a large scale. I like to read nerdy science stuff as much as the next garden geek, but sometimes I wonder what these carefully controlled professional garden trials have to do with my little home plot. I'm not trying to produce acres of productive, disease-free plants, or bring a sturdy fruit to market. I just want my lazy August bowls of insalata caprese. While we're at it, I wouldn't mind enough tomatoes to meet my spaghetti sauce needs for the winter months. Beyond that, is it just production for production's sake? Can you actually ever have too many tomatoes?

Moreover, can you ever have them too soon? By the beginning of September my family has usually tired of the salsas and tomato salads that we were savoring a few months prior. We are looking forward by then to winter squash, root vegetables and fall greens. By starting the season early, am I just creating an early start to the tomato ennui of late summer?

I saw a package of walls-o-water on sale last month, and decided to give them a try. My husband snickered, reminding me of my professed disdain for these contraptions last season. But I bought them, and hence the first tomato seeds were started a few days ago. I am not desperate to be the first with tomatoes on the snack table at work -- I'll leave that to the boys -- so why did I buy the walls-o-water? Mostly, I am just curious. I love to learn new techniques in both the garden and the kitchen. Do they really work so much better than plain-old "transplanting when the soil warms"? Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing out on. I sneered at salad spinners until I tried one, and was immediately converted. I suspect that a few extra weeks of tomatoes will probably not alter my life significantly, but at least the next time I roll my eyes at my competitive colleagues, I can do so from experience. And if my family ever goes deeper into local and sustainable eating, this season extension technique may be the difference between a new salad or yet another bowl of dried beans!

Since I was doing a head-to-head trial of walls-o-water versus my usual transplanting practice, I figured I'd throw in another branch to my research study and wintersow the same seeds. I just placed them in wintersown containers outside. While the wintersowing folks make no claim to earlier harvests, they do argue that the technique yields sturdier, healthier plants. I've never had much problem with tomato plant vigor (knock on wood). Usually, it's the opposite -- they seem to grow into every corner of my garden as soon as I turn my back. By the end of August, I can't keep up with all the tomatoes. Even if the wintersown seeds end up maturing later than the other plants, they can act as replacements should I lose a plant to pest or disease. Somehow I suspect all will do just fine in the end, and I will wind up with even more tomatoes than I usually harvest. Fortunately, I am trying out Opalka paste this year, and a surplus should just mean more days in the kitchen making sauce. Remind me how nonchalantly I wrote that last sentence when I am complaining about a weekend-long canning extravaganza this summer.

Seed starting with children

Valentine's day is soon upon us and an assortment of children ranging from 1 month to 4 years old are descending upon my house tomorrow for a holiday celebration. Valentine's Day conveniently falls on a holiday weekend this year and, being a government employee, this means I have Friday to prepare and Monday to recover. I figured this party would be a nice activity for the folks who aren't going out of town for the long weekend. It was also a way for me to get around the usual birthday party ritual of opening a pile of gifts, which always leaves me slightly queasy.

I do understand that en masse gift opening is a treasured part of most American childhoods, as are sweets and party decorations. However, with a Valentine's party, my son could host his friends and revel in balloons and cupcakes without Mommy wincing inwardly as he greedily tears open a gift of a toy gun, baby video game console, or other such contraband in this liberal hippie household. Even my husband, who is less earnest than me about only having peaceful, nutritious toys, resents the influx of plastic and electronic noise-making clutter that comes with every new round of gift giving. I still laugh sympathetically at the memory of a birthday party we attended last year wherein the two year old birthday girl received, no doubt from a loving but childless relative, a three hundred piece miniature plastic grocery store set. I could see every parent in the room calculating the hours of pickup represented by an afternoon with that box. I do recognize that all of these gifts are given in the spirit of love and give us an opportunity to teach our son about generosity and gratitude. Nor have I arrived at the point of some parents who insist on no birthday gifts or who make their kids donate everything to charity. Those folks are doing their best to raise their kids as they see fit, and I commend them, but that is a little too extreme for my tastes. So for now, I will have quiet family birthdays involving books and a small toy and which focus largely on food and candles. And I can use other holidays - like this Valentine's Day! -- to host a guiltless gift-free party for my son's little friends.

I realized as I planned this party that, as the hostess, I could easily fall in to the same gift trap I was seeking to avoid. Goody bags and party favors also usually involve lots of mass-produced and near-disposable plastic baubles. The easy answer to this would be candy - and lots of it! -- but I know my crowd. While some of the parents wouldn't care about a sack of chocolates or lollipops, I know that many are trying to raise their kids without exposing them to the usual amounts of over-sugared, high-fructose corn syrup snacks. For that reason we are serving apple bread refashioned as Valentine's cupcakes. I am making fruit punch, though -- it's a party after all! Kids can have some juice, can't they? Everything in moderation, including moderation. But what to do about the party favors? That's when I realized my ace-in-the-hole: my saved seeds from last year.

I went on a seed saving jag this fall, and now have many baggies of seeds stored in my basement. I saved most in amounts that cannot be reasonably planted in my tiny garden. After sharing many with gardening friends, I still have plenty of beans, tomatoes and various flowers. I also have too many seed packets, partly from my winter tradition of seed catalog impulse purchases, and partly from the generosity of gardening friends who are looking to unload a similar overstock. I decided that the perfect party activity would be to decorate a small pot, fill it with soil and plant a few seeds. Thus, each child can leave with a party favor, and one that will likely last longer than a plastic water gun from Target.

Now, what seeds to plant? I feel that I have three ways to go on this: exciting seeds, fast germinators or ones with cute holiday references. By exciting, I mean seeds that toddlers will enjoy using: large, brightly-colored and satisfying to manipulate. Minuscule seeds like cactus or begonia are nearly impossible for my adult hands to handle. Even larger ones like marigolds would be hard for chubby fingers that still fumble with shoelaces. Corn and peas are big and bright and also have added value as being recognizable to little ones. A scarlet runner bean, however, is just the thing: black and purple, large and with a pleasantly smooth surface. I also happen to have a large jar of them from last season.

There is an argument to be made for planting fast germinating seeds: most garden websites advise parents to use these seeds since rapid results should keep the kids readily engaged in the process. Browsing the blogs and websites of elementary school teachers, I found lists of seeds that are reliable for fast, high-percentage germination. Of the seeds I have in my stockpile, they recommend cosmos and marigolds. Notably quick and reliable vegetables include lettuce and radish. Several experienced teachers recommended rye and other grasses, which pop up the quickest at 3-5 days. I remain unconvinced about selecting seeds based on this characteristic of fast germination. For one, even three days is an eternity for my little boy. Secondly, I bristle at the suggestion that kids must always be given the seeds with the most rapid results and high yields: why can't even young children appreciate a longer wait? And the occasional seed failure, while discouraging, is a fact of gardening life. With the fruit of your labors also comes the detritus destined for the compost heap.

Finally I considered the Valentine's theme seeds. Sweet 100 tomatoes have a cute name, and I can also tell the kids how tomato plants were once known as "love apples". Alpine strawberries are red, and sweet as well, although they tax even my patience for germination. I could also be more ironic, aiming to entertain the parents with Valentine's seeds like bachelor buttons or love-lies-bleeding.

In the end, I am going with Scarlet runner. My son loves to sort and count them, and they have a magic Jack-in-the-Beanstalk look about them. They are also no slouches in the speed of germination department. Lastly, the name "scarlet runner" has a certain tang-- perhaps conjuring the image of ill-fated Valentine's hosiery or an adulterous Hawthorne escapee? Alright, that is stretch. Come Saturday, however, chubby hands will be plunging these gorgeous seeds into Valentine's planters. I can rest easy knowing that I have not distributed party favors destined for the landfill, though perhaps they will wind up the compost heap.

Winter sown seed on Candlemas

It is halfway to Spring and snow is falling in Chicagoland in big, thick flakes. I am glad for this reminder that we are still in the thick of winter, since it was only yesterday that I got around to starting my winter sown seed project.

As a cook, I thrill to the discovery of unfamiliar recipes and cooking methods. After years of braising, baking and stir-frying, it is always wonderful to feel the occasional jolt of the new and unexpected -like when I recently found a recipe for roasted garden radishes in Saveur. Rarely do I feel this jolt in my garden reading: year after year, the magazines and books recycle the same methods and advice. I tire of the litany, in the same way that I tire of reading, yet again, a cooking article on "sexy" Valentine's menus or reusing Thanksgiving leftovers. But new excitements still lurk, beneath the oft-repeated articles on "discovering" heirloom tomatoes. Eliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest recently awakened my imagination, and got me thinking about the way I limit myself to edible gardening only in the warmth of summer. This primed me to be especially interested in a recent blog post at Artful Greens about an unfamiliar approach to seed starting: winter sowing.

It is no small excitement to flutter about with seed mats and grow lights, especially in the doldrums of January, but it always makes me sigh and wonder why I have complicated everything so much. All of these expensive accessories, all of the time rigging up wiring! Looking at my fussing, it should be a wonder my foremothers ever managed edible gardens and beautiful flowers. Wintersown.org encourages the curious gardener to throw the received wisdom of modern seed starting out the window. Sowing flats in the dead of winter, and leaving them outside under protection avoids all the nicking, filing and stratification we put seeds through just to mimic the treatment of a winter outside in the ground. Advocates of this method argue that not only does it save time and money, but it also yields hearty seedlings that are more productive over the long term. As further enticement, the lady at wintersown.org will even send you free seeds for the price of postage. With nothing to lose but two first-class stamps, I signed up.

My seeds came yesterday, and thanks to my husband's voracious milk habit, I had plenty of containers ready to recycle as mini-flats for my winter sowing. I found a great pictorial post on how to prep the jugs at the blog Our Little Acre. Some folks do a "U" shaped cut in the side of the milk jug and use it like a pull down flap. The cut-in-half method at Our Little Acre seemed easier in the long run, especially when removing seedlings. Above you will see my collection of nine "flats", with everything from columbine to kale, soapwort to tomatoes. If nothing comes up, all I have lost are some stamps and a pleasant afternoon in the basement, getting my fingernails dirty for the first time this year. I suspect, however, that something will germinate, and I will be converted to this new low-tech method. I am especially interested in the tomatoes. Beside what wintersown.org sent me, I may put out some Opalkas and Sweet 100's just to see what happens. I may never be able to rid myself of the heat mats, especially if I want my passion flowers and cacti. But just as a new recipe launches me on new adventure in the kitchen, this method has renewed my enthusiasm for gardening, no matter how thickly the snow falls outside.

First germination of 2010

I checked on my first seed-starting projects of 2010 today and was excited to find some babies popping up! I started my Passiflora incarnata seeds a mere two weeks ago. My web research had indicated that germination could take months, especially for seed that wasn't fresh out of the fruit. As is typical of gardening advice on the web, germination instructions varied wildly: some sites recommended soaking seed in passion fruit juice prior to planting, some said to nick or pre-soak in water while others just said to plant directly with no foreplay. I suspect some of the confusion stemmed from people discussing "passion fruit" seed rather than the specific scientific name of the plant -- there is more than one Passiflora! The seed packet had minimal information, and said germination occurred at 30 days to 3 months, with only a 30% germination rate. I planted 9 seeds and left them on top of my fridge, which I hoped would keep it at a tight 70 degrees. Last week, when I pulled out my seed heat mat, I decided to stick the P. incarnata on there, as I suspected that even with the radiant heat of the fridge, my kitchen temperature was more in the 60's on average.

Ahead of schedule, I have two seedlings. Maybe more will pop up -- I am owed another one, if I am to trust the reported germination rate. I wasn't expecting such rapid progress -- now I am worried I started too soon. Fortunately, I saved some seed for this exact scenario -- when you are facing a spotty "days to months" germination prediction, one always needs to keep some reserves. I will be breaking out the grow lights sooner than expected, and hopefully I will have a nice healthy plant to put out in the spring. For all of the hand-wringing about the difficulty of propagating from seed, the Maypop passion fruit seems to be cheerfully resilient. Many gardeners in warmer zones complain about the plant's invasiveness, and by all reports the hardiness limits are underestimated. I will hedge my bets (if I only have these two seedlings) and stick one in a pot to bring in to overwinter, and one in the ground, close to the house to benefit from a warmer microclimate.

The other little seeds that popped up are my cacti -- I got a packet from Pinetree Garden Seed on a whim, and picked up a bag of cactus mix medium on sale at Lowe's. The seeds are incredibly small and must be sown on top of the surface since they need light for germination. I stuck these on my seed mat as well. At first, I had Saran wrap over the rectangular container, but when water condensed it drooped onto the medium. When I pulled up the wrap, little black specks were sticking to it, and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was potting medium and what was a cactus seed. I scraped as much as a could back onto the surface, and put a seed starting tray lid on top. Here is the first germinator! The packet was a mix of several different types of cacti, so this is another "days to months" scenario. I will keep a close watch -- I may need to prick out the early risers and transplant to a different pot as environmental needs change.

Finally there are my hellebore, which are still in their cold stratification period. They currently inhabit the butter compartment of my fridge. I get to pull the bag of seeds and medium out on March 15th and send it into the homestretch of germination. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it works. If not, I have to repeat the 5 month warm-cold-warm process. Aargh! I am so desperate for some hellebore that I may just suck it up and pay the premium prices for a plant at the nursery. My passion fruit and cacti give me hope, though. Maybe my seed-starting stars have aligned for 2010.

Bean sprouts

Any book of of winter gardening projects usually dedicates a page or two to home-grown sprouts. Sprouting seeds at home is more than a winter pastime, and you hardly need the excuse of snow on the ground or a case of January gardener's malaise to break out the mung beans. They taste better then store-bought and they are cheaper. At nearby supermarkets, a small bag of limp, watery sprouts will set you back at least 2 dollars! At nearby Asian markets, there are bins of cheaper sprouts, but I lately have also begun to question the healthfulness of any store-purchased sprouts. These little guys are a set-up for food borne-illness: moist environment, balmy room temperature air, and every shopper digging into the bin. The dregs at the bottom look like an E. coli dream. To my growing chagrin, stories of salmonella contamination on sprouts have been surfacing in the national media every few months. All this is to say that home-grown sprouts are the way to go.

The one drawback of sprouting at home is that it requires some advanced planning. If you want Vietnamese spring rolls or vegetable pad thai this very night, you will have to forgo sprouts. Occasionally, I substitute julienned cucumber or carrots, but neither matches the crisp texture of mung bean sprouts. With a few days of forethought you can have a bowlful of juicy bean sprouts, all for a few cents and free of diarrhea-inducing pathogens.

I buy my mung beans in bulk from the local Korean food emporium. I also notice that the seed companies sell bags of organic sprouting seeds, albeit at a much higher price, and I'm sure the local health food stores sell them as well. I do not know if these mung beans hail from Asia or if they are locally-grown....for more committed locavores, this is a topic that needs investigating. Soak a handful of the seeds in a bowl of cool water over night. In the morning, drain the seeds and put them back in the bowl. Here, I should note that books, the Internet and Youtube all give instructions for purchased or homemade sprouting contraptions involving screens and cheesecloth. I have had excellent results just using a bowl, and suggest that you save your time and money and do the same. If you want the thick sprouts you see at the store, you will need to weigh down the sprouts with a bowl of water or weighted dinner plate. If you don't mind skinnier sprouts, then just cover the whole bowl with a cloth. Every morning and night, rinse the beans, drain them and then cover them up again. In four or five days, you will have a giant bowl of sprouts.

The mung beans I sprout still have their green skins -- if you want to be rid of them, submerge your sprouts in a big bowl of water and agitate. The skins will rise to the top and you can skim them off. I have stopped caring about this, but if you want them to look the "right" way, go for it. After that, dry the sprouts really well (a salad spinner is the easiest method) and then stick them in the fridge. You will have crisp, fresh sprouts for days -- easy to toss into any stir-fry or Asian noodle dish. Their light juicy taste is a welcome addition to dinner, especially if one has been eating seasonally and consuming mostly cold-weather brassicas, greens and root vegetables.

The world of sprouts extends well beyond mung beans, but I am just not that big a fan of alfalfa sprouts on sandwiches and other such California-cuisine flourishes. If you are interested, I highly suggest perusing the Youtube videos on home sprouting. There are some hilariously earnest instructional videos, touting the health-giving benefits of all sorts of home sprouts. These videos usually feature people that look like they have sprung straight from a 70's commune, Birkenstocks and all. Bust out the macrame materials, the Moosewood Cookbook, and have yourself a retro sprouting afternoon.