Wheatgrass juicing is considered one of the prominent cornerstones of a healthy plant blended diet. Juice extracted from wheatgrass is considered a power house of amazing nutrients and enzymes essential to your health.
When I started growing wheatgrass the fundamental approach was to take a shot of the juice once a week. This calls for a steady supply of wheatgrass, in the first place, from which to make the juice.
I am utterly hoping that you haven’t been wheatgrass juicing because you had assumed wheatgrass growing is hard and must be for pros. This is wrong. As a matter of fact growing wheatgrass at home is one of the most simplest things to do.
Wheatgrass has other applications apart from juicing. It is an easy to make and insanely cheap plant based feed for all kinds of animals. I have come across some growers reporting feeding 17 chickens for less than 25 cents per day! This is why it makes sense that if you are raising poultry or other animals organically, feeding them wheatgrass is common.
What differs between juicing wheatgrass and animal feed wheatgrass is the point of harvest i.e sooner or later. Apart from this, the growing method or approach is essentially the same.
To grow wheatgrass for juicing simply follow the following simple steps.
Step 1:- Soak wheat seed overnight
For the purposes of learning how to do this before confidently scaling, take a cupful of wheat seed which is also known as wheat grain and soak overnight as shown here.
Use a bowl or a cut out fizzy drink bottle. Anything that can hold water is fine. An eight hour soak will achieve the same results so it need not necessarily be overnight.
Sources of seed include farmers’ markets, farm shops where they sell seed or even wheat fields if you have access to any. If you are going to feed animals, untreated seed is highly recommended as animals tend to each the seed remains.
Step 2:- Move soaked seed to colander
Following overnight soaking to allow seed to loosen up and absorb moisture, transfer your soaked seed to a colander. In hotter climates make sure to rinse the seeds in the colander at least twice per day to prevent them from dehydrating. Simply run water over them from the colander.
Within the next 24 hours, you will witness the sprouting of the seeds in the colander. You want to allow the sprouting seeds another 24 hours in the colander for the sprouting to intensify.
The wheat seed in the colander shown here has been in here for two days and is ready for next step.
Step 3:- Move sprouting wheatgrass from colander to container
Following two days of your wheatgrass growing in the colander, now move it to a punnet or tray for planting.
I personally like to use grocery re-purposed punnets to plant my wheatgrass seeds. These tend to come in good sizes suitable for be it sunflower microgreens or strawberry seedlings or lettuce microgreens.
Unlike my other methods of growing microgreens, note that my growing container has no holes beneath. Also that I don’t use any soil. Wheatgrass calls for significant watering which means holes will only cause it to loose water.
Number 2, wheatgrass is very good at developing a root network so no soil will be required to anchor the plant.
Nutrients and fuel for the growing wheatgrass to the point of harvest will be derived from the seed itself as well as chemical reactions in the context of photosynthesis.
When planting, spread your growing wheatgrass seed to cover the base of the container as shown here in a crowded fashion. This good for density as the wheatgrass continues to grow.
Step 4:- Place container under light
What to do next after placing your seeds in a container varies. I have utilized both methods previously.
One method is to dampen a piece of newspaper and covering the seed in a dark place for one more day or two before exposing the sprouting seeds to the light.
The second method, which I use here is to immediately expose the sprouting seeds to the light. This will kick-start photosynthesis and allow the sprouts to turn green.
These are both workable approaches. The first approach ensures the sprouts grow even taller before being allowed to turn into leaves when exposed to the light.
Most light is good except that direct sunlight must be avoided. You could place the container on your window sill or kitchen counter. In this case I use a dedicated grow room with artificial LED light that’s set above the grow container.
Your container with growing wheat seed will remain in the light until harvest time.
Wheatgrass grow changes – Day 1 to harvest
After 2 days of planting in the punnet, this is how the wheatgrass looks like. Exposure to light has triggered aggressive greening and development of stalks. At this point, I have been watering the wheatgrass once per day. The water is good, the light is good, the plant is flourishing.
(I will be updating this post as the development occur to harvest, stay tuned)
