FAQ

Can you grow other grains in this sprouter?
Yes, you can grow barley, oats, buckwheat and sunflower seeds in the same way. Good barley and oat seed is hard to find. It is stated in the reference books that there is more difference in nutrient composition between two fields of wheat than in wheat and barley. Kamut is a waste of money. It’s a bigger seed and takes up too much room. After testing I recommend Buckwheat Lettuce and Sunflower greens. Both taste delicious, are easy to grow and are full of nutients. (I am currently out of stock of my 6-tray sprouter, but you can get this one in the meantime..it is a 3-tray but you can just get two.

Do you cut it once a week like a lawn?
The wheatgrass is not regrown after cutting because the second growth is not nearly as nutritious and is more likely to have mold. The growing medium also has to be replaced with each tray. Some people say you can cut twice from a tray. I would say it depends on your reasons to take wheatgrass – the sicker you are the more you need all the nutrition that fresh seed will give.
Even changing the growing medium and seed each time each tray of wheatgrass still only costs one dollar or less. That means your juice will cost less than 20 cents an ounce after you have paid off the sprouter. At a typical cost of $1.50 an ounce of juice in a bar you will have paid off your sprouter in about 2 months of regular juicing. The sprouter was built for a lifetime so the rest of your life the juice will be less than twenty cents an ounce and a bit of regular work.

Why don’t you grow in soil?
It is messy and unnecessary. People who say that soilgrown wheatgrass has more minerals do not realize that plants do not absorb minerals from the ground until they have a taproot. Sprouts and wheatgrass are not grown long enough to have a taproot. I use kelp liquid as a foliar feeder and that adds all the minerals you need.
Another reason not to use soil is that you can actually juice more of the whole plant when you don’t have to worry about soil contamination in your juice. The pale yellow area below the green leaf is very rich in nutrients. Nothing is wasted. An organic potting soil I bought for my houseplants recently contained worm castings, chicken manure and bat guano. I don’t want that near my wheatgrass.

Can I keep the sprouter in a basement or garage?
You can keep it anywhere that it has the right requirements; light at least 14 hours a day, either from grow lights or sunlight and a temperature of at least 65 degrees. If there is no heat in the basement or garage then the seed won’t grow well as it gets colder. The seed has pretty much the same requirements for growth and comfort as a human. It would not be my preference to keep it in the basement.

What about grow lights?
I am no longer selling light bulbs. Read the growing lights page for the ones I recommend. You can grow in the dark with 3 of these lights or you can just use one in a goose-neck floor lamp or clip-on fixture for supplemental lighting in the fall and winter months. The grass grows fastest if it has 14 hours of light so you have to add light in the winter. Please believe me, you do not need light at every level. The light would be too close to encourage growth. Light coming from above the sprouter at a 45 deg angle is enough for all the trays. Please don’t email me to confirm this, experience it for yourself.

There are some very expensive lights available on the Internet if you search for grow lights but these are not necessary for wheatgrass.

How much water does the sprouter drain out each day?
The 6 tray sprouters do not have any water runoff. if they do you are overwatering and that leads to mold growth.

Is it a lot of work to grow wheatgrass?
It takes only about 15 minutes a day per person average to keep it all going well. BUT, like your houseplants, you can’t just forget it. You have to do the work regularly. It is a regular job, like cleaning your teeth or doing your laundry. Fortunately, the extra energy it gives you will more than make up for the effort it takes.

What about mold?
Mold is the biggest problem with growing wheatgrass and it is hardly mentioned in any of the books. In the wheatgrass forums it is the biggest topic. It looks like white puffy clouds while alive and like black dots when dead. With the techniques and growing tips that I tell you about when you buy the sprouter you will be able to keep it under control. It is always present in the air waiting for the right conditions to grow and, unfortunately, it likes the same growing conditions that wheatgrass does. The best control for mold is Citricide, This is a natural product made from grapefruit seeds. It used to be available in small bottles but now it is not so I rebottle it myself. With your sprouter you will get a CD with all the instructions you need to grow healthy wheatgrass.
However, anyone with asthma or mold allergies should be very careful not to ingest mold or invite it into their house. They could get their chlorophyll from my greenfood instead.

Doesn’t wheatgrass taste bad?
Some people think so. I hated it at first, I had an aversion reaction in my stomach and my nose wrinkled when I even thought it was time to juice.Now it doesn’t bother me. Here’s what I did at first: I juiced some carrots for a chaser because I love carrot juice – you can use anything you like. Then I put a nose-clip on my nose. (I got it at a sports shop in the swimming section.) Then I made my wheatgrass juice and drank it with the nose clip on. Then I drank the carrot juice right afterwards. Honestly, this worked like a charm for me and the aversion started to diminish in about six weeks.

I actually have a new system now. I drink my juice first thing in the morning and then chase it with a glass of water. Then I suck on a lemon. It works perfectly and it is better for me than carrot juice, which has too much sugar.I take wheatgrass in the afternoon also sometimes but then I use frozen cubes that I make whenever I have a tray left over. I put the frozen cubes in my blender with lemon and water, then I drink it all mixed together. It is refreshing and the wheatgrass hardly tastes because it is frozen. I know some people say frozen isn’t as good but, what the hey! You have to find what works for you.
I tried to eat that green blender sprout soup that Ann Wigmore recommends and I just can’t do it. I gag and feel sick. I just can’t get it down. I don’t think anything is supposed to taste that bad. But the wheatgrass I can manage – especially when I hold the thought of how much good it is doing for me.

Another thing about wheatgrass is not to overdo it at first. If a little is good, more is not better. It has a very cleansing reaction on your body, moving all kinds of toxins out of your cellular tissue and organs. It can stir up a lot of stuff at first until you get cleaner inside. So get used to it slowly and work up to a top dose of 4 ounces at one time. I don’t go above 2 ounces. If you are healing from cancer or major disease you should read some of the books and learn how to do wheatgrass juice implants instead of drinking it.

Will wheatgrass make me healthy?
Of course I can’t know that. But to me, wheatgrass is a message to my body that I am prepared to do some work on my health. The energy gain and clearing out that wheatgrass brings give me the push to look more carefully at what passes my lips in the name of nourishment. To make a huge generalization, most of the food you can buy in the supermarket will make you sick. It is not real food at all. Your body can get so tired from trying to deal with all this fake food that it doesn’t have the energy to get better. Wheatgrass gives me the energy to take a look at what works for me and what doesn’t, what strengthens me and what weakens me. I can’t forget because in a few hours more I have to water the grass again.

Do I need to eat a raw food diet?
The more raw food you can incorporate into your diet, the better off you will be. We all need some raw food for fiber but lightly cooked food is fine also. It is highly processed food that is bad. Once you have the mindset that processed food is like sawdust and glue in your digestive system then it influences which foods you reach for.

But don’t sweat it! If you have been used to the typical American diet you can move gradually, at your own pace, into a more healthful way of eating. If you study all kinds of natural healing, basically what they are saying is that there should be a good flow of water, oxygen, natural foods and energy through your body. Anything that hampers that free flow in any way is not good for you. Sitting at the computer for hours is not good for the flow of energy through my body – so I get up and bounce every hour or so. But we can only interrupt the flow of fluid, oxygen and energy for so long. Sooner or later we breathe, drink and move around.

The wrong food is the most dangerous because it doesn’t just temporarily interrupt the flow. It can actually get stuck in your body for a long time and make you feel bad so you reach for more of the same. Food is something we can poison ourselves with time after time and not realize we are doing it until we get very sick.

We are all like the frog in the water. Have you heard that story? If you put a frog into hot water he will jump right out but if you put him into cold water with the heat on he will get gradually hotter until he dies. We are taking in stuff that the body does not recognise as food so much now that our body is busier getting rid of the garbage than it is feeding the cells. Western culture is the worst for not listening to our bodies. If they complain we just give them a bit more sugar or caffeine or all the other addictive stuff to quieten them down. Then we wonder why we get sick!!! After a while on your journey to health you become more attuned to your body and listen to it when it is uncomfortable in any way.

Which juicer do you recommend?
If you want a hand-crank model, I switched to the Lexen juicer I sell here and I loved it. I got more juice from the same grass with this juicer than with the Back to Basics. But hand-crank juicers are more effort to use.
If you want an electric juicer, I now sell two for you to choose from here. I have one now and I am wondering why I waited so long for an electric juicer. I have to juice two trays today before I leave town and I couldn’t do that with the hand-crank.  This is by far the best wheatgrass juicer!

Can I put grass in the blender so I don’t need a juicer?
You can, but it tastes awful and you put less grass in so you get less benefit. It also will break your blender unless you cut it up very small first. If you want to you can chew the grass to get the juice out but don’t swallow the fibre because you only have one stomach and it can’t digest grass fibre. Some people claim that wheatgrass juice could support life, but not the fiber. When the Irish ate grass during the potato famine, they died.

So get it now and get your living greens daily!

You may also need growing lights and a juicer.

You might also consider the Wheatgrass Growing DVD