Measure your seed into the sprouter with the stainless steel spoon. Cover with water and soak, usually six to eight hours for leafy seeds and longer for legumes. Check your seed bag or the product page for the specific seed, since soak time is the one thing that changes seed to seed.

Then rinse and drain twice a day, morning and evening, for the next three to five days (depending on the seed). About a minute each time, as easy as brushing your teeth! The sprouter does the rest: it holds the angle for you, so water drains out completely and air flows perfectly for the best growing conditions.

When the sprouts fill the jar, harvest. That is the whole process.

No soil, no sun, no green thumb required!

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In our sprouter, about a quarter cup for leafy seeds like broccoli, salad mix, alfalfa and clover. About one cup for legumes like lentils, green peas, mung beans and protein mix.

Seed expands a lot more than people expect. A quarter cup of broccoli seed fills the sprouter completely.

When the sprouter is full, they are ready. More precisely, you are looking for white tails anywhere from a quarter inch to three inches depending on the seed.

You can also just taste them as they grow. Wash your hands, rinse a few, and decide for yourself. Flavor shifts day to day and there is no single right answer.

Rinse them well. This washes off the biofilm that builds up during growing, which helps them last longer.

Remove the seed hulls if you want. Optional, but it buys you a couple of extra days of shelf life.

Dry them. This is the step people skip and then wonder why their sprouts went slimy. A salad spinner is the best tool for it, and it doubles as your storage container.

Refrigerated and properly dried, five to seven days. Store them loosely in something with a bit of airflow. A salad spinner with the lid resting on top works well, and so does any clean container that does not compress them.

The container matters less than two things: they need to be dry going in, and they need to be cold.

71 to 76°F is the sweet spot. Sprouts grow noticeably slower when it's too hot or too cold, and a kitchen in the mid sixties can take twice as long to produce the same harvest.

Nothing is wrong if your batch is slow. It's almost always temperature.

No, and we generally suggest you do not. Sanitizing before growing tends to reduce germination, which means a thinner harvest.

If you would rather take the extra step, a quick vinegar and water rinse at harvest gives you most of the reassurance without hurting your crop. If you are pregnant, nursing, or immunocompromised, this is worth a conversation with your doctor.

Harvest before you leave if the batch is close, and refrigerate. Sprouts hold five to seven days in the fridge, so a short trip is not a problem.

If the batch is only a day or two in, refrigerating slows things down considerably. It is not ideal, but it is better than leaving them unrinsed on the counter.

The simplest answer is to start your next batch when you get back. Nothing is lost by waiting.

Almost certainly not. What you are looking at is root hairs, and nearly every new sprouter mistakes them for mold at least once.

Root hairs are tiny white filaments along the stem, and they mean your sprouts are thirsty. Rinse thoroughly and they will disappear. Bump up to three rinses a day for the rest of the batch.

If they are still there after a good rinse, or the rinse water is very cloudy, or the batch smells rotten, discard it and start over. Those three signs together mean something actually went wrong.

It's the temperature. That's the answer probably four times out of five. Sprouts in a mid sixties kitchen take roughly twice as long as sprouts at 71 to 76°F.

If temperature is not it, check your soak time against the seed bag. Under or over soaking both slow things down. You are looking for at least two thirds of the seeds showing tails after the soak.

First, this is fixable, and it is very rarely the seed. We have shipped tens of thousands of bags with fewer than three confirmed cases of bad seed.

Run through these four: Did you soak for the time on the bag? Is your growing area between 71 and 76°F? Did you sanitize before growing, which can prevent germination entirely? And are these sprouting-specific seeds rather than bulk bin seeds?

If you have checked all four and it still did not work, email us with what you found and we will make it right.

A little sulfur smell is normal, and it gets stronger when your kitchen runs warm. That is the plant chemistry doing exactly what it should.

What is not normal is rotten. If it smells like something spoiled rather than something sulfurous, discard the batch and start over.

Broccoli and radish are naturally peppery. That flavor is characteristic of the variety, not a sign anything went wrong, and it varies a little batch to batch.

If you want something milder, try alfalfa, clover, lentils, mung beans or green peas. All are gentler and slightly sweet, and they blend into food without announcing themselves.

It is supposed to. Complete drainage is the point, because trapped water is the single most common reason home sprouting fails.

Rinse over the sink and let it drain freely. That is the design working, not a defect.

Send us a photo at support@thesproutingcompany.com and we will get a replacement out to you. Your sprouter is also covered by a one-year warranty.

A dry seed is a whole plant in storage. Germination wakes it up, and the seed starts building: vitamins it did not have while dry, protein your body can absorb more easily, and minerals it had locked away.

You also eat them hours from harvest rather than days from a truck, which matters because some nutrients degrade meaningfully during storage and transport.

And you know exactly what is in them, because nothing is. Seeds, water, and you.

Sulforaphane is a compound your body makes when you eat cruciferous vegetables, and broccoli sprouts are one of the richest sources of the precursor it comes from.

It is one of the most studied plant compounds in nutrition science, with more than 25 years of peer-reviewed research and over fifty human clinical trials behind it. Researchers are interested in it because of how it works: rather than acting as an antioxidant itself, it activates a cellular pathway that prompts your body to produce its own protective enzymes.

Broccoli sprouts can contain up to 100 times more glucoraphanin, the precursor to sulforaphane, than mature broccoli. The published range runs from about 10 to 100 times depending on the variety, which is why we harvest at day three when levels peak.

That finding came out of Johns Hopkins in 1997 and it is the reason the entire broccoli sprout category exists.

A fresh sprout carries two things in the same bite: glucoraphanin, and myrosinase, the enzyme that converts it. Research has found that when active myrosinase is present, sulforaphane bioavailability is roughly three to four times higher than when the conversion is left to gut bacteria alone.

A capsule usually delivers an isolated compound without that enzyme. Fresh sprouts deliver the whole system, plus the fiber, vitamins and co-factors that come with actual food. It also costs a fraction as much per serving.

Glucoraphanin content, and the difference is large. Our standard Organic Broccoli tests at roughly 35 μmol per gram. Our High-Sulforaphane Broccoli tests at 107 μmol per gram, third-party verified, which is about three times the competitive average we measured.

That difference comes from genetics. Glucoraphanin levels in broccoli seed are determined mostly by the variety, so the seed you start with decides most of the outcome. Most broccoli seed sold for sprouting was bred for farm yield rather than nutrition, and when we tested competitor seed, one sample came back with none at all.

Both are good seeds. If sulforaphane is why you are here, the high-sulforaphane one is the reason we exist.

Selective breeding over dozens of crop cycles, the same way every food crop has been improved for thousands of years. No genetic modification anywhere in the process.

The seeds are certified organic, which by definition means non-GMO.

Every seed we sell is certified organic by Oregon Tilth, and organic certification means non-GMO by definition. Every lot is also pathogen-tested for E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria, and tested for germination rate before it ships.

SproutArmor is our proprietary seed treatment that adds an extra layer of care before seeds ever reach your counter. It is one part of a broader food safety program built around growing with confidence at home.

Yes, when they are grown responsibly, and this has been studied properly rather than just asserted. A 2023 peer-reviewed review co-authored by Dr. Jed Fahey of Johns Hopkins and our founder Doug Evans examined more than two decades of foodborne illness surveillance and concluded that responsibly produced sprouts are both highly nutritious and very safe, with only a very small fraction of foodborne illness attributable to them.

On our end, every seed lot is pathogen-tested before it ships and protected by SproutArmor. On yours, the sprouter is engineered with the airflow and drainage that DIY methods lack, which are the two things that actually go wrong.

Only if they are labeled specifically for sprouting. Seeds sold for planting or for cooking move through a completely different supply chain, are not tested to the same standard, and are not intended to be eaten raw.

Sprouting seed from a reputable source is pathogen-tested and germination-tested. That is the whole difference, and it is the difference that matters when you are eating it uncooked.

For leafy seeds, an 8 oz bag gives you about 5 and a half full harvests, and each harvest is roughly 6 to 7 servings. So somewhere around 35 servings per bag.

That works out to pennies per serving, which is a fraction of what the same amount of fresh sprouts costs at a grocery store, when you can find them at all.

You can, and plenty of people start there. Our founder once sprouted in a sock to prove a point. It worked.

The reason most people quit DIY sprouting is that mason jars fail at the two things that matter. The neck traps water, which is how mold starts, and the mouth is narrow, which limits airflow and makes harvesting awkward. Our sprouter has straight walls that drain completely and a mouth 125% wider than a wide-mouth mason jar. Both are patented.

There is also what your food touches. Sprouts in our sprouter contact only glass and stainless steel, never plastic. And it holds enough to grow food rather than garnish.

The vessel is soda-lime glass, the same glass used in Pyrex. The filter is 304 stainless steel. Those are the only two surfaces your sprouts ever touch.

The base and stand are recycled ABS and HDPE, contain no PFAS, and never contact your food.

50 oz capacity, 6 inches wide, 10.25 inches tall, and 3.44 pounds empty. It takes up about as much counter space as a stand mixer bowl and it is designed to be seen, which turns out to be part of why the habit sticks.

Yes.

The most common thing we hear from customers is that they wish they had another one.

With one sprouter you harvest, then start again, which means fresh sprouts about once a week. With two you stagger them, so you are harvesting one while the next is already growing. Fresh sprouts every day instead of every week.

The other reason is variety. Two sprouters means peppery radish alongside your broccoli, or lentils next to salad mix, without waiting a week between.

One year. If your sprouter stops working the way it should, we will repair or replace it.

Everything ships within two business days.

How long it takes to reach you depends on where you are and which shipping method you chose at checkout. You'll get tracking as soon as your order moves. If anything is ever running behind, we'll tell you rather than leave you wondering.

Yes, on orders over $99.

The United States and Canada. We ship from both the USA and Canada.

We cannot ship internationally beyond those two, and package forwarding services do not work with our system. If you use one, we are not able to recover the order.

Choose Subscribe and Save at checkout and you get 25% off, with fresh seeds arriving on the schedule you set. After the first order you are only paying for seeds, not the kit.

It exists because the hard part of any habit is the resupply. Running out is how people stop.

It is self-service and takes a few seconds. Click Account at the top of the site, sign in with the email on your subscription, and pause, skip, swap seeds or cancel right from the dashboard.

If you have never signed in before, the account creation link was sent with your first order, but you do not need it. Signing in with your email works either way.

If you are subscribing, that is why. Subscription already carries our best available discount at 25% off, so additional codes will not stack on top of it.

If you are not subscribing and the code still will not apply, email us with the code and what is in your cart and we will sort it out.

You will be harvesting in 5 days. If you are not, tell us within 30 days and we will make it right.

Your sprouter also carries a one-year warranty, and you can return it within 30 days of delivery if it is not for you. Return shipping is currently the customer's responsibility, and we need your original proof of purchase.

Seeds are a fresh food item, so we cannot take them back once they have shipped. If something is not right with yours, email us and we will make it right.

Email support@thesproutingcompany.com. We answer within about an hour during business hours, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 Pacific.

We do not do phone support, and that is deliberate. Email lets us look at a photo of your sprouts, which solves most questions faster than describing them ever could.