Project Summary

A Little Bit About Urban Sunflower Sprouts

www.myurbanfarm.ca

Sunflower Sprouts are high in protein, Vitamins A, B, C, D, E, and minerals Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, Phosphorus, and Zinc.  Basically, they are a great living multi-vitamin!

These sprouts are grown outdoors, on covered benches, in trays of compost and sand.  No fertilizer is used.  They grow on an 8 – 10 day cycle and are harvested the day of, or the evening before, the market.

The sprouts are brought to the market each week by bicycle and are sold in small plastic bags which can be recycled wherever you can recycle grocery bags.

This project is part of my efforts to develop a model for urban sunflower sprout growing that is in accordance with CFIA guidelines for sprout production.  This model will demonstrate a unique example of urban agricultural entrepreneurship with the goal that the model can be easily operated from an urban residence.

To read about the process of developing this model, please visit: http://cmthoreau.wordpress.com/about-the-sunflower-sprout-project/

Developing the Urban Sunflower Sprout Model

This project started out several years ago when I was growing sunflower sprouts on Vancouver Island

The original set up was kind of crude,   but still provided beautiful, tasty sprouts that were very popular at the market…

I wanted to explore this sunflower sprout model further to see what could be accomplished in the city.  As urban agriculture evolves from mom’s garden to guerilla gardening to entrepreneurship a new economic opportunity arises.

When I moved to Vancouver to attend UBC and study agroecology, I saw the perfect opportunity to further develop this model.  The process started in November 2008 with planning, followed by some research trials in February 2009.  Here I am trialing two varieties of seeds planted at different densities:

It was interesting seeing how the sprouts compared:

For each trial I took a number of measurements of each tray to determine the best planting density and seed:

Though most of the sprouts ended up as compost!

But in the end a winner was had, so I ordered my seeds.
Due to lack of any other space, I kept them in a bedroom closet!

Once I had my seeds chosen, I started to build the infrastructure that I had been planning for months.  It started out as a Google Sketch:

So once the designs were finished, I started building the benches at UBC Farm:

And in the end had two beautiful benches already to go.

But one collapsed.

So now I have only one!

After the benches, err, bench, was built, I installed irrigation, with some help from the UBC apprentices:

So this is the single bench and production area as it stands now;

All ready for production…

Production starts by soaking the seeds:

And preparing trays of compost and sand:

Then the seeds are spread onto the trays and covered with another tray of soil mix.
This helps keep moisture in and light out.  As the sprouts push up the trays of soil above them, they become stronger!

After a while the top trays are removed so the sprouts can get some light, which turns them green.

The sprouts are watered automatically by a mist system until they are ready to harvest several days later.

The sprouts are cut by hand into cold water, spun in a salad spinner, and then placed in a cooler of ice until they are ready to bag…

The sprouts are then packaged, labelled, and readied for the market:

They are then loaded up on my bike, all ready to go to market!

Go to the blog to read more…