From Organic Gardening and Farming, December 1975.

(Summarized by OG)

The late Robert Rodale, founder of Organic Gardening and Rodale Press, asked one of the Rodale R&D engineers, Dick Ott, to come up with a handier and more efficient sprouting method. The traditional canning-jar is fine but provides only small yields and the 3-5 times a day rinsing can be a problem. Rinsing is essential to prevent molds and fungus, one of which can be the carcinogenic aflatoxin fungus. For jar and regular sprouter projects, "R&D researchers found that soaking seeds in the very hottest tap water (150 deg.) prevented essentially all mold growth."

Dick came up with a self-watering system that can be built with a little perseverance. Although he began with a plastic waste can, I'd suggest the ubiquitous food-quality 5-gallon bucket we all know and love. Here's the remainder of the description.

"A holding tank fits into the top [of the bucket]. In the [center of the flat] bottom of the tank [which appears to be a stainless steel bowl] a petcock is installed, so that water can drip through to a small dumping pan fastened beneath the tank. The dumper is balanced so that as it fills, it flips over, spills the water into a large round cake pan, and then rights itself. The cake pan is perforated and acts as a distributor, sprinkling the water over the sprouting trays stacked below it. (These sprouting trays can be fashioned from wire and wood, or drainage holes can be unched in smaller cake pans.) All you need to do is fill the reservoir every day or two and harvest the sprouts.

. . . [With automatic ] spilling at two-hour intervals, the self-rinser has averaged 8.9-fold increases over seed weight, producing 4-inch sprouts in only five days.

. . . We feel that this is significant because tests have shown that Vitamin C content peaks at between 3 and 4-1/2 days after germination. Sprouts this young are often not as tasty, but if you let them grow for 6 to 7 days, over half the vitamin C can be lost. [This] system yields 4-inch sprouts close to the optimum period."

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), April 05, 1999

Answers

Good info O.G.

here are a few links for other sprouting info Sprout Information Index (Sol Azoulay)

Raw foods links

Index of raw foods Elist (Good)

Sprouts and nut milk

Growing Sprouts; G88-886-A

Growing and Using Sprouts

-- Brian (imager@ampsc.com), April 05, 1999.

Valuable links, Brian, thanks.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), April 06, 1999.