Lynchburg Grows

LG volunteer Evan Miller holds up two flats of pea sprouts that we grew for the CSA. Photo by Aaron Lee.

Each Tuesday some of the students from Amelia Pride Center (an alternative school for at-risk youth based in Lynchburg) come to the farm. They’re called the Young Champions and recently, we had the students start pea and sunflower sprout trays that we could then harvest and to add to our weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) shares. The first batch we tried before Christmas kind of failed, but we tried again after the New Year and the second time was the charm. Today, we cut and washed pea sprouts for tomorrow’s shares. Last week the Young Champions started on sunflower sprout trays. They should be ready soon. The guy in the picture is Evan, who volunteers a couple of times each week and who is known at LG as the man for whom no pepper is too intimidating. Anyway, here’s how we did the pea trays. Easy enough and delicious. – Aaron Lee

The process:

We put a cup of pea seeds in a jar, covered them with water and wrapped the jar in a black plastic bag. We soaked the seeds overnight and drained them the next day. Then we put the drained seeds – still in the jar – back in the black plastic bag, where again they sat overnight. On day three, we took the seeds out of the bag and the jar and spread them over an inch and a half layer of compost that we’d spread in a 10×20-inch plastic flat (growing trays pictured at left) that had holes in the base. From there we took a second flat – the same size – that didn’t have holes in the base and placed it under the compost tray. (This tray was where we initially added four cups of water that the top layer soaked up.) From there, we put the trays inside clear plastic trash bags and closed them up with clothes pins. Note: Housing them in bags creates a humidity dome effect that helps the seeds sprout. We then placed those bags under a shop light (we used shop lights because we had multiple trays and needed a lengthy light; really, any light will do) where they sat illuminated for 48 hours. After those two days were up, we removed the trays from the clear plastic bags (now we were seeing some serious sprouting) and put them on a 12-and-12 schedule where they were getting artificial light for half the day and no artificial light for the other half. All throughout the process we watered to make sure the roots and soil didn’t dry out. The whole process lasted about 2 1/2 weeks, which was a longer than than was necessary. We got roughly a pound of sprouts off of each tray. – Aaron Lee