Sprouting Seeds and Microgreens on the Windowsill

If your child wants to grow something they can actually eat this week, sprouts and microgreens are the answer. They are the fastest food a child can grow: no garden, no digging, no waiting for summer. A jar of sprouts is ready in three or four days, and a tray of pea shoots in a week or two — and you can do it on the kitchen windowsill in the middle of January.

That speed is exactly what makes them brilliant for children. A whole growing season can feel like forever to a five-year-old. A jar of mung beans that visibly changes overnight keeps the magic coming, day after day. They are also some of the cheapest crops going — a small bag of seed makes batch after batch — so they are a lovely, low-pressure place to begin. If you are just starting out with the children in your life, our kids' growing hub has lots more quick wins to try alongside this one.

There are two slightly different things here, and it is worth knowing which is which before you start.

Sprouts in a jar

Sprouts are seeds that you soak and then rinse until they wake up, swell and push out a little white root and shoot. You eat the whole thing — seed, root and all — usually after three to five days. The classic ones are mung beans (the crunchy bean sprouts you get in a stir-fry) and alfalfa (fine, grassy little threads that are lovely in a sandwich). You grow them in nothing more than a clean jar on the worktop, with no compost at all.

This is where children see germination happening right in front of them, faster than almost anything else they can grow. A dry, hard seed turns into a living plant in days, and there is no soil hiding the process — they can watch every stage through the glass.

How to grow sprouts in a jar

1. Put 1–2 tablespoons of sprouting seed into a clean glass jar (a jam jar is perfect). It looks like hardly anything — they swell a lot.
2. Cover the seeds with plenty of cool water and leave them to soak overnight, or for about 8–12 hours.
3. In the morning, drain the water away. The easiest trick is to cover the top with a square of muslin or a clean J-cloth held on with an elastic band, so your child can tip the jar and pour the water out while the seeds stay put.
4. Rinse and drain twice a day, morning and evening: pour in fresh water, swirl it, tip it all out again. Leave the jar tilted at an angle on the draining board so the last drips run off.
5. Keep the jar somewhere light but not in hot, direct sun — a normal kitchen windowsill is ideal. In a few days you'll see roots, then little shoots.
6. After 3–5 days, when the sprouts are crunchy and the shoots are an inch or so long, give them a final rinse and they're ready to eat. Keep them in the fridge and use them within a day or two.

Mung beans are the most forgiving first choice — big, fast and very crunchy. Alfalfa is finer and a bit slower but makes a gorgeous sandwich filling. Let your child pick which jar is "theirs" and check on it each morning before breakfast.

Microgreens in a tray

Microgreens are the next step up: you sow seed thickly onto a thin layer of compost, let it grow a little longer than sprouts, and then snip the tops off with scissors once the first proper leaves appear. You don't eat the roots — you cut the green shoots just above the soil and leave the rest behind. They taste surprisingly strong: peppery, fresh and a bit grown-up, which children often love.

Good microgreens to grow with kids include pea shoots (sweet, tendrilly and a firm family favourite), radish (hot and peppery), mustard (gentle warmth, easy and quick) and sunflower (chunky, nutty shoots from black sunflower seed). Pea shoots are the gateway crop — sweet enough that fussy eaters will happily munch them straight off the tray.

How to grow microgreens in a tray

1. Find a shallow tray — a clean mushroom punnet, a takeaway tub or a seed tray all work. If it has no drainage holes, poke a few in the bottom or simply water sparingly.
2. Fill it with about 2–3cm of peat-free multi-purpose compost and press it flat and level.
3. Scatter the seed thickly all over the surface — much more thickly than you would in the garden. The seeds should almost touch. This is the one time "too many seeds" is the right answer.
4. Press the seed down gently, cover with a thin sprinkle of compost (or leave pea and sunflower seed barely covered), and water with a fine mist or a gentle splash so you don't wash the seed about.
5. Keep the tray on a bright windowsill and the compost just damp — never soggy. A daily check and a little water is a perfect job for a child.
6. In 1–2 weeks the shoots will be a few centimetres tall with their first leaves open. Now snip what you need with scissors, just above the soil.

Pea shoots are especially generous: after the first cut, many will sprout again for a second, smaller harvest, which feels like a lovely bonus. Sow a fresh tray every week or two and you'll have a steady supply with almost no effort. This is essentially the same idea as growing a windowsill salad in pots, just quicker and on a smaller scale — a great stepping stone towards bigger windowsill crops.

What you need

You really don't need much, and you may have most of it already.

• For sprouts: a clean jam jar, a square of muslin or a clean J-cloth, an elastic band, and a bag of sprouting seed (mung beans and alfalfa to start).
• For microgreens: a shallow tray or punnet, a bag of peat-free multi-purpose compost, a small watering can or a spray bottle, child-safe scissors, and microgreen or pea-shoot seed.

Sprouting and microgreen seed is widely sold in UK garden centres and supermarkets, and it's inexpensive. Wait until you've actually grown a jar or a tray and tasted the results before buying anything else — these crops are meant to be cheap and easy, and you can get going for a couple of pounds.

Eating them

The whole point is to eat what you've grown, and these are easy to slip into meals children already like. Pile sprouts and pea shoots into sandwiches and wraps for a fresh crunch. Stir a handful through a salad, or let your child scatter microgreens on top of dinner — a pizza, a jacket potato, a bowl of pasta or soup — as the finishing touch they get to add themselves. Mung bean sprouts are lovely tossed into a stir-fry right at the end so they stay crunchy.

There's real value in letting the child decorate the plate. A meal they've topped with their own home-grown shoots is a meal they're far more likely to actually eat. Keep portions small and let them taste a single shoot first — radish and mustard have a peppery kick that some children love and others find too strong.

What children learn

Beyond the eating, sprouts and microgreens quietly teach a lot. Because there's no soil hiding the seed, a jar of sprouts is the clearest window onto germination a child can have: they watch a dry seed soak up water, swell, and push out a root and a shoot, day by day. It's the same process happening in every seed packet, just sped up and on full display. Talking through what they're seeing — "the seed drank the water and woke up" — turns a snack into a proper little science lesson.

They also learn patience and responsibility in bite-sized doses. Rinsing the jar twice a day, or watering the tray each morning, is a small, regular job a child can genuinely own — and the reward arrives within days rather than months, which keeps young growers motivated. And there's a gentle healthy-eating win threaded through it all: children are famously keener on vegetables they've grown themselves, and a peppery shoot they cut with their own scissors lands very differently from greens served up on a plate.

When they're ready for the next quick win, try growing cress on a windowsill — same fast magic, even simpler — and head back to the kids' growing hub for a whole menu of easy projects to grow through the year.