Sprouting mixes are fun to plant, but...

We have tried using seeds from sprouting mixes from the health food store, which has been fun, but has produced some unexpected crops.

For a start, we broadcasted some seeds labelled "cresson" (cress). We expected this to mean water cress, which is generally what is meant in France by cresson (cresson de fontaine). Well, it turned out to be peppergrass (cresson alénois). So now we have a big bed of peppergrass!


We also planted mustard from a bag of sprouting seeds. Now that I look back, I see that we should have expected that it wasn't going to be leaf mustard (Brassica juncea), the kind we crave in our salads. It turned out to be white mustard, Sinapis alba. We ate it anyway when it was young; it was better cooked as it was kind of tough and a little hairy, like raddish leaves. The trouble was that it grew a lot faster than all of our other Brassica greens, which we planted all together in a line. But we quickly gobbled it up, and now our more tasty greens can see the sunlight!


We also broadcasted a mix of alfalfa, raddish, and fennel. The fennel hasn't come to anything and the alfalfa seems to be slowly growing (though is it really Medicago sativa? We might not be able to tell until it flowers!). What grew in place of raddish, while definitely a Brassica, is not something we recognize at all. And no raddishes are forming. Again, we'll have to keep watching, unless someone recognizes this plant:

So, sprouting mixes are a cheap way of getting lots of seeds, but you must expect some surprises!

Note to Self: Plant Beans Indoors Next Year

I've been looking at the awesome blogs of people who left comments, and found that planting beans in pots seems to be quite popular: Robert does this for his peas, and Nome for her broad beans.

Our peas and broad beans both got attacked and eaten by a some kind of nocturnal rodent monster that ploughed up the lines of helpless legumes. In addition the first peas we planted didn't grow, presumably because the ground was too cold.

I never really considered planting beans indoors. My philosophy has largely been "if it can be started outdoors, better to save the space, pots and potting soil for the plants that need it". But maybe next year we'll start beans and peas indoors to get an early start. Thanks for the inspiration, folks!