Hi, all. Just want to add that I'm a long term sprouter as well, but want to caution newbies about a few things.
1) It's important to distinguish between a sprout, a soak and a micro-green when dealing with vendors and making your own sprouts. I've been burned by seed vendors selling a product for one category, that was not suited for it.
Sprouts involve the seed germinating and starting to grow, but do not make it to the micro-green stage.
Micro-greens set a root and grow a bit. They are normally harvested by cutting with scissors.
Soaks just involve soaking the seed so that it softens, usually soaking overnight, for health and sanitation reasons. They usually do not completely germinate and often involve larger seeds. Seeds sold by reputable companies for "soaks" may not always be living and capable of germinating. If you try to "sprout" soak-quality seeds, you can run some risk of bacterial issues, as the seeds that are not living will deteriorate and ruin the sprout. Look for vendors that clearly make this distinction, as they are being honest with you.
2) Back when I initially started sprouting, you could buy good quality, living, naked sunflower seeds. These are seeds with the hard shell removed, unlike the black shelled sunflower seeds which still have the seed coating, but still a live product. This was a great product, as you did not have the problem of removing the black shells after sprouting. I have not been able to find clean, live naked sunflower seed for sprouts for a long time. The last time I purchased naked sunflower, the vendor represented them as suitable for sprouting, but they were mostly not living seed. Thus they were only suitable for "soaks" of short duration. The vendor mislead about the product, and got nasty when I complained. Black shell sunflower seed is good for microgreens and can be just sprouted as well, but if sprouting, you need to pick the shells out.
3) My favorite sprouts: Red cabbage, cabbage, broccolli. sunflower, sweet or pop corn, kale and red kale. Onions and garlic sprouts have great flavor, but I find them hard to sprout properly as they take longer and are also difficult to separate the seed coats from the sprout. These days, with sunflower and corn, I normally do microgreens. I do not do soaks.
4) I avoid many kinds of sprouts, as I do not like the spicy hot ones, such as mustard, arugula, radish, etc.
Hope my experience helps some of you that may be starting out with sprouting. Its a great way of getting highly nutritious winter greens. (Loved this thread and the article!)
