Commusings: From Seed to Shining Seed by Jeff Krasno

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Dear Commune Community, 

Over the past few years, I have become borderline obsessed with nature’s self-perpetuating cycles – like the carbon cycle, the water cycle and the topic of today’s musing, the amazing seed cycle. 

I was initially introduced to the seed cycle by the “King of Sprouts,” Doug Evans. Schuyler and I now have multiple mason jars in rotation with broccoli, lentil and chickpea sprouts, and Schuyler even recently made hummus from sprouted chickpeas! God knows, I married up. 

Sprouts are not just incredibly healthy, but sprouting is very gratifying — and it’s so simple. To learn how to do it yourself, you can take Doug’s Commune course Let’s Sprout for free.

Sprouting ideas on IG @jeffkrasno.

In love (and sprouts), include me,
Jeff

 

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From Seed to Shining Seed

In my hand rests a solitary broccoli seed, brown and oval-shaped with a conspicuous white spot on one flank. It appears almost microscopic in the middle of my palm, no more than 1 millimeter in diameter. Given the right conditions, however, this wee seed could grow into a seven-inch wide broccoli head compromised of distinct florets. But I’ve got other plans for it. 

You see I’ve become an avid sprouter. One can sprout seeds of myriad species including, but not limited to, alfalfa, clover, fenugreek, turnip green, wheat grass, wild rice, green pea, radish, adzuki bean, lentil, chickpea, mung bean and red cabbage.

The equipment requirements for sprouting are negligible: a wide-mouthed quart-sized mason jar, some cheesecloth and a rubber band. Sure, you can purchase kits that incorporate metal holsters that secure the mason jars at a 45-degree angle to facilitate proper drainage. But it’s hardly necessary. You can stack your sprouting jars on a dish drying rack or lean them in a bowl, among other improvisations.

Two tablespoons of these minuscule broccoli seeds will yield a pound of sprouts in 4-6 days. The labor is hardly onerous. You soak the seeds for 6-8 hours, put the jars in a cool and shady spot and then simply rinse and drain them twice per day. It’s immensely gratifying to watch the seeds push forth their tiny white stem and green, doll-house-sized leaves.

This process of germination is pre-photosynthetic. The seedling is leveraging warehoused energy, a small parcel of food stored in the endosperm of the seed. These stockpiled nutrients – starch, fats and proteins – can lay dormant within the seed for thousands of years. But given the right conditions – moisture, air and a moderate temperature – the embryo will be activated to grow, cracking through the dampened seed coat and … sprout.

The seed-plant cycle is one of miraculous self-perpetuation. If I hadn’t planned on layering the broccoli sprouts lavishly on my hummus-topped crackers, I could plant them. The sprouts would grow roots and become a seedling and, with proper nurture, mature into a plant. As boys become adolescents, they often become intensely malodorous. Plants, on the other hand, adopt a patently different olfactory attraction strategy.

As many plants mature, they develop flowers – petals of every imaginable hue whose oils perfume the air. Both the fragrance and flamboyance of flower petals are designed to attract pollinators – bees, wasps, hummingbirds, bats, beetles, flies and moths – who are lured in for nectar (not unlike how the Golden Arches bait our teenagers for French fries).

The job of our winged friends is to move pollen grains formed on a flower’s anther to the flower’s stigma. Let’s quickly detour into a brief primer on the structure of plants.

A flowering plant has ample reason to identify as non-binary as it boasts both male and female reproductive parts. The male sexual organ of the plant is referred to as the stamen, while the female sexual organ is known as the pistil containing the stigma, style and ovary.

The stamen produces pollen grains and the seeds of the plant develop in the pistil. Typically, the pollen grains are transported to the pistils with the help of insects and birds that visit flowers to pilfer their sweet juices. 

Pollen grains are uncommonly sticky. This is adaptive because, as insects loot the flower for its nectar, pollen adheres to their bodies. The stigmas of flowers are also tacky and snatch the pollen grains off the flagellating insects. Pollination is the movement of pollen grains formed on a flower’s anther to the flower’s stigma. And pollinators are the delivery service.

The male reproductive cells (gametes) are carried in the pollen grain. The grain travels through the ovary tube of the plant where it meets the female gametes in the ovules. And … voila … fertilization. It’s not exactly dinner and a movie but there is a certain understated romance to it.

When the pollen fertilizes an ovule, it transforms into a seed that contains an embryo (in the form of a root and a shoot) and some stored food for future germination. Then the ovary wall develops into a pod or a fruit for the singular purpose of safeguarding the seed. 

Seeds are dispersed by wind, gravity and water. In some plants, seeds are housed within a fruit – such as apples and oranges. These fruits, including the seeds, are eaten by animals who then disperse the seeds when they defecate, unwittingly planting them in fertilizer. 

Seed, germination, sprouting, seedling, maturing, pollination, fertilization, fruiting, seed.

And around and around it goes. Seeds beget seeds within an intricate web of mutuality and interdependence that evolved over millions of years.

Nature designs for life. Regeneration is built into its operating system.

The bee mutually arises with the flower. Their tryst produces the fruits upon which we dine and delight and, in our metabolism of them, generate the carbon dioxide that is subsequently extracted from the atmosphere by the plant’s plastids for the production of energy, much of which is recycled back into the fruit.

There is no boss in nature’s equation. Nature is a democracy. Everyone plays a part. There is a reciprocity and mutuality baked into it. Sure, there are trophic hierarchies – tops of the food chain. But ecosystems can be equally upended from the top or the bottom. You exterminate the wolves and a top-down trophic cascade results, leaving the grasslands fallow. You kill all the microbes in the soil with herbicides and a bottom-up cascade ensues. Plant life becomes frail, stripped of nutrients and unable to provide proper sustenance to those up the food chain.

Evolution produces a sensitive order. It’s neither stable nor perfect nor fair. But it goes on, learning through the eyes of trillions of its modifications. This force, this great aggregate intelligence, is the great oneness of the universe. It is the Brahman. And each one of us is its delegated adaptability.