Sprouting Machine

Tim Yeoman’s Lifetime Lazy Sprouting Machine

This simple contraption yields eight square feet of perfect sprouts (sunflower, mung bean, lentil, chickpea, alfalfa etc) every week, totally automatically, needs almost no maintenance and should last a lifetime.

An open-fronted stack of shelves, made from 2 x 1 inch strips of wooden ‘baton’, holds a stack of eight perforated plastic seed trays, each filled with kitchen paper and covered in the various beans to be sprouted. An old loo cistern sits at the bottom, containing a small submersible pump fitted with an electric timer. (This could easily be powered by a small solar panel.)

Every 12 hours, water is pumped up a strip of hose-pipe at the back and sprays through a shower hose at the top for 15 minutes. This then drips through the trays and collects in the bottom reservoir. The water only needs replacing once every week and becomes a potent organic fertiliser in the process.

This will produce more than enough sprouts for a family every week and, once replicated on a larger scale - for example, in a small garage or garden shed - can generate enough sprouts for a viable commercial business. California’s farmer’s markets, for example, are filled with thriving sprouting ventures, producing pates, spreads and other sprouted products, all generated in small spaces with minimal overheads and workload.

Self-Reliance - A Recipe for the New Millennium, by Tim Yeoman. Permanent Publications. www.permaculture.org.uk