KidZone

The Power of Seeds

Instructions for Sprouting

Experiments

Kids Sprout + Art Gallery

Kid's Sprout Exploration Kit

Links to Other Seed Science Sites

Seed List

Sprouting Devices

Growing Instructions

Sprout Cookery

Sprouting Shop

Book Shop

Gift Shop

Who We Are + What We Want

Sproutpeople Scrapbook
This is the place to be if you think seeds are cool. Well, it is at least one of the places to be. We really want to do this up big time, but we have to satisfy adults (and they can be very demanding =:-) who want to buy our seeds and supplies, so this area of our site is kind of slow to evolve. If you can send us links or info, we'd love it. Let's get going - here's a picture with words you may not know, but will soon if you read and click around a little.....

Who are us?

We Sproutpeople have grown a whole lot (almost 200 tons) of sprouts, so we know something about germination and seeds. We like seeds. We put in a garden back in 1989 and we were so turned on by the way plants grew and how the fruits of those plants contained so many seeds (we could grow hundreds of plants only a year after planting one seed and growing the plant that seed produced for one Summer), that we left city (Seattle) life, moved to the middle of nowhere (Illinois) - started planting more seeds and raising chickens and goats along with our 3 very happy dogs and 2 very pissed off cats.

We didn't last long in the middle of nowhere Illinois - long story - but even though we moved to the middle of nowhere Wisconsin after selling our goats and giving away our chickens (the few the foxes hadn't got to) we were still seed crazy - and we still are.

The big joke is - we started by wanting to grow one seed into thousands - by saving the seeds produced by the plants we grew - and now we grow seeds into sprouts - we use thousands of seeds to produce just a little tiny bit of food (for example - we use as many seeds to produce 5 pounds of Broccoli Sprouts as a farmer would use to plant a whole acre - to grow thousands of big ole Heads o' Broccoli). Life is a trip! Sometimes it is just confusing - other times it is perfectly sensible =;-D

There really is a lot of fun stuff here - or there will be - sometime soon , but for now we just had to get something started, so:

Here is a basic description of seeds that I lifted from another site:

The Structure of a Seed: The hard outer portion of the seed is known as the seed coat. The inside of the seed is called the embryo. The embryo consists of some basic structures. These are the hypocotyl (hy puh kaht uhl), which will eventually become the shoot or stem; the radicle (rad ih kuhl), which is the basis for the root of the plant, and the epicotyl (ep uh kaht uhl), the first true leaves. The seed also (usually) contains cotyledons (kaht uh lee duhnz). The cotyledons are the seed leaves. The first one or two little leaves that appear on a seedling. They are not true leaves, but are actually food storage organs.

A new seedling is not capable of producing it's own food. Food is stored in the cotyledons for the new plant to use until it is capable of photosynthesis. The seeds of some plants produce two cotyledons; these are named dicotyledonous (dy kaht uh lee duhn uhs), but are called dicots (dy kahts) for short. Tomatoes and beans are dicots. Other plants produce seeds which have only one cotyledon. These are named monocotyledonous (mahn uh kaht uh lee duhn uhs) or monocots (mahn uh kahts).

Corn, and most grasses, are monocots. Monocot seedlings also contain endosperm, which is another source of food for the seedling. This is not a complete explanation, as it gets more complicated than that, but for now, all we need is the basic knowledge that a radicle is the root, etc.

Sprouting with children is a wonderful way to teach them - or learn together - about the miracle of seeds and plants.

This is a sadly neglected area of sproutpeople.com. It is so only because there is so little information online. We will improve it if ever we can.


©1993-2007

SPROUTPEOPLE®

170 Mendell St.
San Francisco, CA 94124

Toll Free:
877/777-6887
(877/SPROUTS)
We only use the phone for emergencies.
Back in 2001 we were still using the phone. One day I was talking to a long-time customer while pushing my daughter on the swing in our backyard (this is what a mom n' pop business is like on the internet). It dawned on me that my priorities were severely messed up, so I stopped using the phone. I love to talk and I love to help, but my family would never see me if I picked up the phone again.

The very best way to contact us is through E-mail =:-)
We are quite fast and VERY thorough. We love to help.

We have been an internet only business since 2001. We are not a big corporation. We are but 2 people, mom n' pop. We decided after years of juggling our family's (kids, dogs, cats and even our own) needs, and the needs of Sproutpeople, that we had to make more time for our kids, so we stopped talking on the phone. All calls go to voice mail and have since 2001.

We are very fast to fill orders and answer e-mail, and though we wish we could make the time to talk, we just can't seem to get more minutes into a each hour. We are many years older than when we started and our days are too short and made up of too few hours to do everything. This limitation in our business has not kept us from pleasing our customers, nor from growing (as we have every year since 1993). We do what we do as well as we can, and we think we do it very well indeed.

We appreciate your business more than we can say. We ask that you use the phone for emergencies only and that you search our site for answers before e-mailing us. This site is bigger than any 4 sprout books put together, it is always available and it is free, and we know that almost all questions are answered here.

Thanks again for your patronage and your many kind words.

Sproutpeople family