Thursday, April 29, 2010

Wheatgrass 101

Growing wheatgrass is super easy. Here's how:
1. Procure wheat.
2. Make sure you check to see if you already have wheat. Especially be sure to check that food storage starter kit your mom gave you for Christmas a few years ago. Look thoroughly. There's a can of wheat in there. This especially a good idea before packing up three boys and driving to Riverdale to the whole foods store for overpriced tiny bags of wheat and then driving all over Ogden looking for Kitchen Kneads to buy better-priced wheat and chocolate-covered cinnamon bears and price the wheat grinders ($269 I think they were) Karen Gilmore told us about at her bread-making class a while back. Don't leave the cinnamon bears at the store. Forgetting children is optional.
3. Soak wheat 10-12 hours. You'll want to soak enough wheat to cover your entire planting surface.
4. Procure potting soil and a container. I don't necessarily recommend canning jars (unless you're going for a specific look) because it's hard to pull out the root-bound dirt when you're through with the wheatgrass. Also, I used Miracle Grow potting soil that may have made my grass grow faster. Once I planted my wheat, it was tall enough to look good in a week.
5. Fill the container until the soil is about 3/4 to 1/2 inch from the top. Dump the soaked wheat in (and the water too--why not?) and spread until it's even. Cover with more soil to the top of the container.
6. Water the whole thing until all of the dirt is moist.
7. Loosely cover with plastic wrap. Place in a spot where you'll get indirect sunlight. Keep it there with the plastic on until it sprouts. Move it wherever you want it to be as long as it gets some sun at some point in the day--it's not picky. Have fun watching it grow.
8. The directions I read said that if you want to trim it to eat, trim it down to one inch. Once you trim it, it doesn't look as good as it did when it was first growing, so if using it for decoration, let it grow until it's too bushy or drives you nuts then pull it out and replant it. You can probably even reuse the soil a couple of times if you want to be really frugal, or provident. Just do it joyfully (like when the kids are in bed).

5 comments:

  1. Aubrey-You are so funny! This is the kind of humor we need on this blog!-Katie P

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  2. lol, love this!! I thought they were beautiful decorations at the dinner. I think I just may have to try this. I think I have some wheat around here somewhere.

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  3. The cheapest and best place to buy wheat, by far, is the Bishops Storehouse. A 25# bag is $6. You cna walk into the Bishop's storebouse (on the backside of Des Industry in Layton) anytime they are open to buy bulk bags of anything they sell. If you go Fridays after 1:00, you can actually dry pack can.

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  4. Oh I love this idea! I had no idea how to do this:)

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