Guide to easy and cheap pea microgreens, with lots of pictures

Homegrown microgreens can be a great way to add lots of taste and fresh nutrition to your meals, especially during the winter. Getting started can look pretty expensive and complicated, but it doesn't have to be. I'm going to share how we do them, the cheap and easy way.

For sprouting and/or microgreens, you want to use food grade seeds since they won't be treated the same way garden seed packages often are. We like peas because they are: easy to find and grow, cheap, produce big enough greens that they can be used many ways, will regrow a few times and they taste like fresh peas.
Dried peas can be used several ways in cooking so you can find bags of them at most grocery stores. We found the best deal for us was at our local Indian grocery store. The pictured 4lb bag is going for around $7 these days and we used less than a half bag over last winter. ( you can often find other sproutable seeds there at great prices too. Fenegreek is our #2 choice. I just find it a bit more complicated than peas but still very easy with great flavour)

The other supplies you will need are at least one cleaned takeout container that has a lid, ( if you can save several, that's the best option so you can have a more continuous supply) and a bag of potting soil or growing medium. I got a nice bag of organic, high porosity potting soil on sale in the fall and still had lots by the spring.

To get started you want to soak some of the dried peas in water for 12-24 hours. I go with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of dried per container and rinse the peas before making sure they are well covered in water to soak. They will plump up but still be fairly hard. The photo shows what they look like after soaking.

When the peas are ready, put a thin layer of soil in the container. At least a 1/2 inch and you don't need more than 1 inch depth. Then sprinkle the peas to cover the soil. You want to lightly water the soil so it is damp but not so wet there is loose water. Then cover with the lid.
Peas like it fairly cool to germinate so if you if you have a colder spot, you can put them there for a few days. Don't worry about getting them sun at this point.
Check on them every day or 2 and make sure the soil is still damp. They should sprout in 3-5 days.
Once they are sprouting, like the picture, you can take the lid off and move them to a sunny window. Keep giving them a bit of water every couple of days as they grow.

As soon as the sprouts are at least a few inches high, you can start clipping and eating. Clip off the sprouts at least a 1/4 inch above the seeds. ( the whole sprout is edible, including the tendrils) Peas are big enough seeds that you can often get a second or third round of growth from each batch. The later ones just won't be as large or tasty.
Once the seeds are fully used up, you can just dump them in the garden as mulch and clean the container for a new round.

If you want to have a regular supply then more containers come in handy since they let you keep starting new batches. One to 2 a week was the right amount for the 3 of us.

These greens can be used raw and plain, just as greens in sandwiches, snacked on or added to salads. They are great in soups, scrambles or stir fried too so lots or option.
Enjoy!

Thank you for sharing!  Beautiful pictures.

I love microgreens.

Just wanted to update.
We got several blocks of coconut coir growing medium cheap so I having been trying them. What I've learned is that while it works, there is a big difference between sprouts in it compared to an inoculated potting soil. I know legumes generally need fungal root partners to grow well, but I didn't realize how much it would affect even sprouts.

The sprouts done in myco inoculated soil do SO much better! I was shocked at how much slower and weaker the plain medium sprouts are. (All my prior photos are soil sprouts)

I'm going to try mixing soil and medium and see how that does and I'll update.

For now, I have to strongly recommend soil for peas.

Thank for all the great information and the pictures. I have a question on other sites that explain how to make them they say to use a covered dish to wait down and block out light for at least 3-4 days. So I bought two 13 x 9” foil cake pans the kind of throw away, and I put the COIR in the one I made little holes in. I put that on top of the one that does not have holes. Then I took another one and put it on top of the peas that are on the COIR and put a gallon of water on top to wait it down and I wonder if that’s sufficient.? don’t want mold growing in there because that would just about kill me to ingest any kind of mold. Please I would appreciate any advice you have.

The blackout works well, three or four days is about right. I noticed the same as Dian though, plain coir gives much weaker growth than a proper potting mix. Even at the sprout stage the root connection seems to matter more than you'd expect.

How many days did it take you to grow them?  I grow microgreens with the jar-in-the-window method, which works well for me with most types of seeds.  I couldn't get peas to last past a certain point without getting that raunchy pea smell, I had to harvest them at about day 10 or 11 even though online it says they take 10 to 14 days.  I don't think I could get them to make it 14 days without stink-murdering me haha.

Butter Girl wrote:Thank for all the great information and the pictures. I have a question on other sites that explain how to make them they say to use a covered dish to wait down and block out light for at least 3-4 days. So I bought two 13 x 9” foil cake pans the kind of throw away, and I put the COIR in the one I made little holes in. I put that on top of the one that does not have holes. Then I took another one and put it on top of the peas that are on the COIR and put a gallon of water on top to wait it down and I wonder if that’s sufficient.? don’t want mold growing in there because that would just about kill me to ingest any kind of mold. Please I would appreciate any advice you have.

I'm not 100% clear on your set up. (I just can't quite see it from the description) You have 2 foil pans, one has drainage holes poked in it and it has coir and the peas in it? A second intact pan is below it, to hold the water? Then you have a third pan, filled with water that is put on top of the peas?

If this correct, it really is more than is needed, at least in my experience. Once the peas are fully soaked, they just need to be kept lightly damp until they start sprouting and don't need full dark. They do like it cool but only need it a bit humid, not full wet.
If you like the foil trays, the stacking them with one having drainage holes should work. It would make it easier to keep things moist with less frequent watering. You could just have the third one empty and upside down, as a lid on it, but it would only be needed until they start sprouting. Bulldog clips would hold it on, if it is in a space where it could get knocked off.
Keeping them cool and not too wet will prevent rotting, at least as far as I have found. Once they are fully growing, they don't need as much humidity, so they do better in an open container with light.

Not all "molds" are bad. As I said above, I found a huge difference between using inoculated potting soil and coir. Peas really do SO much better with a mycorrhizal partner in their growing medium. They also really need soil, unlike some sprouts that do fine with just water.
With the inoculated soil, I got almost 100% germination and so no rotting seeds. With the plain coir, it was much lower and they struggled so it was harder to keep them from going bad. I opted for letting those trays go a bit dry, rather than risk the failed ones rotting and it worked enough that we still got some good harvest.
Overall, once they are sprouting, keeping them dryer seems to be best. They put out strong roots and they need damp, not the main pea section. Potting soil, with a bit of pearlite, does work the best for me since it holds and does a slow release on water.