Great website for unusual microseeds

[CAdreamer]

http://www.freshorigins.com

[Shivananda]

http://www.freshorigins.comInteresting, although they are primarily in the business of supplying gourmet greens and microgreens to restaurants, they also sell seed mixes. But the included phrase "to commercial growers" indicates to me they only sell in large quantity, and don't cater to the individual/retail market.
Here are a few places that do sell seeds for microgreens to individuals:

www.sproutpeople.com - really great. the best reference material on sprouting available online, San Francisco area. Has a number of microgreen mixes
www.sproutman.com - another longtime pillar in the sprouting community, western Massachusetts
www.organicfruitsandnuts.com - Jaffe Bros, another top California source for organic dried fruits and nuts, also sells sprouting seeds in 2#, 5#, and 25# bags at excellent prices.

And for those not in the know already, microgreens are simply large leafy sprouts of plants like arugula, dill, mustard, beet, etc., which are usually rooted in soil or in a soilless medium (like so called "Baby Blanket" from www.kelpman.com, or in smaller quantities from Sprout People), to allow them to grow up vertically to salad size in about 2 weeks. Tender and more flavorful than lettuces, they are the trendy "next step" after mesclun mix for gourmet restaurants.

And this probably should be moved to the "Juicing, Sprouting & Organic Gardening" discussion. :)

[Arky]

One good way of growing sprouts from mucilaginous seeds (rocquette/arugula being one such example) is to place a piece of terracotta in a tray of water that has holes in it's sides to prevent the water from reaching higher than 1/8" below the top surface of the terracotta. This can then be refreshed periodically. This allows the seed to be kept moist by the natural wicking action of the terracotta. What this method prevents is over-dampening of the seeds into a mucilaginous mess.


J.

[misslinda]

Cool beans, I 've been crafting supplies together to sprout my own microgreens---they are good enough to eat and as nice to have as indoor plants :)

[Shivananda]

This allows the seed to be kept moist by the natural wicking action of the terracotta. What this method prevents is over-dampening of the seeds into a mucilaginous mess. Sprout People carries a terra cotta sprouter from Germany that takes advantage of that natural wicking action you spoke of.

Another good way to sprout mucilaginous seeds is to sprout them with other seeds in a microgreen mix.