A perfect indoor gardening activity for the cold winter months. Grow and eat fresh sunflower sprouts with your kids!
Sprouting is the perfect gardening activity for kids. Not only can you see the “fruits” of your labor within 2 days, but it’s almost impossible to screw it up! We’ve had plenty of gardens that have failed.  We put in lots of hard work, and didn’t get any fruits or vegetables. But sprouting has worked for us every time!  Even better, sprouting microgreens are so tasty and versatile, that the kids like to eat them.
Our latest project was Sunflower sprouts (often called sunflower lettuce). I learned about these tasty little sprouts at a church activity and the kids were excited to give it a try.
Grow Them!
There are just a few simple steps to growing sunflower sprouts. The first is to find some black sunflower seeds in the shell. The ones best for sprouting look like this:
Step 1)
Soak the sunflower seeds for 12-18 hours. They like to float to the top, so I used a jar with a lid to turn it upside down and to make sure it was filled.
Step 2)
Dump into a colander until they sprout- keep damp by spraying with tap water. Once they begin to sprout a tiny white tail, they are ready.
Step 3-6
Step 7
Spray with a spray bottle to keep it damp. After two days, remove the paper towel. After 5-6 days, you’ll have sunflower lettuce!
Eat them!
TJ is my crazy one. He is in that phase where he thinks it’s cool to eat weird stuff. He likes to pull leaves off of his sprouts and chomp on them in front of his friends.. Kind of a show off thing. Lol. So, I made sure to send him some plain sprouts in his lunch.
We also eat the sprouts in sandwiches or on top of some crusty bread. This one has cream cheese, avocado, and tomatoes, with sunflower sprouts on top!
If your kids don’t like to SEE the sprouts on top of their bread, you can always turn it into this mouth watering spread!! Cream cheese, sprouts, and avocado, all in the food processor!! YUM!!
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If you’ve ever used sunflower lettuce/ or sunflower sprouts in a recipe, I’d love to hear what you do with it!
