I bought and read a book recently called ‘Indoor Kitchen Gardening’ by Elizabeth Millard and in it she describes growing ‘shoots’. The idea is similar to ‘Soil sprouts’ but also with some differences. She suggests growing pea shoots, popcorn shoots and sunflower shoots. While I am not sure of how sunflower shoots would taste, I thought peas were worth a go and as for popcorn, that was a new one on me so ‘Challenge accepted!’
The Process She Describes
The idea is to soak the seeds to be shooted (or is that shot?) overnight, then to layer them on top of a tray containing growing medium, quite closely together but not touching, it may delay germination. She says to cover them with another tray, to be removed once the seeds start to sprout. Once they start to sprout, remove the tray and expose them to light (artificial or natural) and let them grow up to about 150 to 200mm and then cut to harvest. Watering can be done by spray or placing the whole thing into a sink with a bit of water in it, and letting the water soak up from the bottom
What I Did
The Seeds
Whatever you do the seeds you start with must be high quality and suitable for sprouting/shooting and therein hangs a tale!
I have previously bought, sprouted and eaten dried pea seeds available from the supermarket, but it had been a while, so I decided to pick up a new bag, to make sure they were fresh and giving me the best chance of success. The brand I use is an Aussie one – ‘McKenzie’s Dried Peas’, designed to be used in homemade soups and casseroles so they obviously have no untoward chemical coatings like fungicides or whatever. I picked them up and brought them home and just happened to be looking the bag over when I spied a notice in very small print that said “Not Suitable for Sprouting”. What the?! I didn’t remember seeing this before, so I checked an old packet or two I had hanging around and sure enough, the same little sign! Needless to say, I sent off an email to their customer service department immediately but I received no reply. I have been eating these as sprouts for a while with no ill effect, but if you are going to use their product, you have been warned!
Anyway, also to have fresh seeds, when visiting a packaging free store, I picked up a glass jar full of organic popcorn, working on the idea that if the shoots didn’t work I could always pop them and eat them as homemade popcorn. Winner!
The Planters
To grow my seed shoots I used a couple of black plastic standard seedling trays which are 395mm long x 290mm wide x 50mm deep. I placed them in my agricultural cat litter trays which are 415mm long x 315mm wide x 70mm deep, which had about 20mm of coarse sand in the bottom. The idea was that the cat litter trays would allow me to water from the bottom (so not to displace anything) and prevent water spillage onto the furniture because I was growing them inside and the sand would act as a bit of a water reservoir.
The growing medium I used was my standard seed raising/potting mix which consists of (by volume) one part coarse sand, two parts sieved compost (worm castings can also be used) and three parts of cocopeat. This was filled into the seedling trays almost up to the top.
Seeding and Shooting
I measured out a half a cup of the peas and popcorn seeds and then soaked them in a container overnight. In the event, while the popcorn fitted well into the growing tray, due to the expansion of the pea seeds as they hydrated they took up a bit more room and I had some left over.
Once soaked I placed the peas and popcorn on top of the growing medium, distributing them as uniformly as I could, which in the end wasn’t very, but what are ya gonna do? I then added water into the cat litter trays under the seedling trays until the water level was about a centimetre up the side of the seedling tray and then, just to be sure, I gave both trays a spray of water. They were both placed on the bookshelf nearest the window in my office.
The original book specified that the seedling trays should be covered until the seeds started to germinate. To be honest I didn’t see the point and didn’t bother, and things still worked fine!
They say that in a dry environment giving the seed trays an occasional spray with water helps to keep them hydrated and prevent drying out, so I did give the seeds a spray once or twice a day.
The peas started to germinate after a couple of days and the popcorn took a few days longer. Neither sets of seed germinated all at once, but slowly over time. This is a good thing! The early germinators can be harvested when they got to the right stage, allowing the slower ones to come through later, thus ensuring a second and possibly even a third harvest before needing to start again.
As the shoots grow, they will bend towards the light and since mine were sitting next to the window on top of a bookshelf they certainly did. To get a bit more even growth pattern I rotated the trays through 180° every day, and that seemed to help.
Harvesting and Eating
Harvesting is simply a matter of taking a pair of scissors and cutting the shoots off when they reach the desired height a centimetre or two above the growing medium, which for the peas works out to 150mm to 200mm for us, and the popcorn at about 150mm when they are nice and tender.
I find that both go well in a stir fry and some of my first harvest I stir fried both together and tossed in a bit of soy sauce and ate them just by themselves. I found them to be quite palatable. In combination with other veggies or whatever and they do add flavour and texture to the stir fry but also are good when stir fried with soy sauce and then put on top of a soup noodle. The pea shoots are not too bad as part of a salad sandwich and the popcorn shoots are also OK, but if they get too long the can get a bit ‘grassy’.
Just for fun I tossed a few of each to the chooks. When I tossed in the pea shoots, they gave me a very sceptical look and didn’t show much interest, but they knew what to do with the popcorn shoots!
