I wish I had the time to update this blog mroe regularly, but the sprouts take a lot of time. Let’s go over a few glitches we have come up against and worked out. As a start we are still having great success with the machete as a harvesting tool.  We have also refined our setup so as to lose less sprouts in the  machete follow through and keep more hulls out of the cleaning and rinsing water. I am trying out a new santizer that seems to be working well.  The sprout equipment needs to be kept clean to avoid contamination so everything is cleaned and sanitized regularly.  I was using a mild bleach solution which works very well, but because we are working outdoors I did not want to risk accumulation of bleach in the soil over time.  It took me a while to find an alternaitve that I thought would work, but finally I have found one thanks to the home beer-brewing industry. It had not occurred to me to look to home brewers for sanitizer, but once I found it of course it made total sense.  The one I found is a powder (One-Step) that when mixed with water basically forms hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).  It breaks down into oxygen and heat so is good for outdoor use.  It kills microorganisms by inundating them with oxygen.  I am not quite sure how that works, but it seems to be working well.  It is also cost-effective.  I have not yet used it for sanitizing seeds, but i think it will be fine. Usually seeds are sanitized after being rinsed, but before being soaked to promote germination.  It is this soaking process that increases the risk of microbial infection in sprouts which is why the seeds are sanitized before soaking, – so there are no s to breed during this process.  But it makes mroe sense to me to be sanitizing the seeds after they have been soaked, so you can nesure you have eliminated micoorganisms before you sow the seeds.  Actually, sanitization should probably happen both before and after soaking to ensure there are no pathogens present.  As long as the sanitizer does not affect the seeds after it has started to germinate this should be fine.

Ahh Damnit, I wrote a bunch of stuff and it got lost when I tried to publish this page…

It’s too hot to do it again. Sorry.