Inspired by #Foodival2016? Everyone can have a Tooting home farm by sprouting seeds!

A new idea at this year's Tooting Foodival was to celebrate local food together by encouraging home seed sprouting.

 Measuring out seeds to give away as trial packs at the Foodival (and checking the spelling)

Why sprout seeds at home?
It's easy, fun, accessible to all (no allotment, balcony or windowsill needed) and you produce fresh  nutritious food with zero food miles and no waste.

How to do it?
Growing your own is easy with our Successful Seed Sprouting at Home handout.

Soak the seeds (there are so many kinds you can use) for a day, then rinse them every day until ready, then enjoy them while beautifully fresh within a week of starting them off.

These sprouted seeds are nearly ready to eat

After the Foodival one family sprouted a mix of lentils and teff

We had good conversations about sprouting on the Saturday at the Foodival. Most people have heard about it....but maybe only ever had those big supermarket bags of bean sprouts. Some people may have a sprouting kit tucked away, or maybe it's a completely new idea.

Enjoy!
Enjoy in many ways - in salads, in pitta bread, mixed with a yogurt dressing or salsa, in a stir-fry, as a topping to add crunch and life to many dishes - and to school lunchboxes.

PS why teff?
In TTT we've become interested in teff cereal grain during our year and half working with refugees and asylum-seekers at CARAS in our Rooting in Tooting project. Teff is native to the Horn of Africa: in Ethiopian restaurants in London you'll be served injera, fermented bread made of teff grain.

Tooting teff

We've grown teff this year in the Tooting Community Garden, and we're going to get some hands-on advice about how to save the grains....so there can be plenty of future sprouting in Tooting.