Growing Wheatgrass

I'm making my 2nd attempt at growing wheat grass.  I know the title says 1st attempt, but I tried once before, except that really what I did instead of grow wheat grass was to grow rotten wheat :).  This time however things are going great, so I figured I'd blog about it.  I'll talk a little bit about why i'm growing the wheatgrass, and then go over the step by step process i'm following.  Hopefully by the time i juice my first shot of wheatgrass i'll have good pictures of the whole process for you.

Why in the world would you grow wheatgrass?
Not too long ago I watched the movie fat, sick, and nearly dead.  It's a great movie, and I highly recommend it.  I happen to be fat, and I get sick often enough, so I decided to follow the diet the guy does on the diet.  Well, at least I plan on it, it's not the easiest thing to start on, possibly I'll post my experiences here, but I might start up a seperate blog so that this one doesn't get overrun with juicing.

So why wheatgrass, and have I crossed the line into the crazy health people?  First off, I haven't really, however I've seen several posts about people having wheatgrass and loving it.  I've had it a few times at jamba juice, and although it's some crazy tasting stuff it makes me feel better throughout the day, so why not grow it :).  It is extremely cheap, especially if u already have the peat moss and wheat (if not just go buy a bag of wheat, it isn't that expensive).

Steps

Day 1: Tuesday march 14th 6pm
The first time I tried to grow wheatgrass I tried it in a jar.  I must say it didn't work out well at all.  Nothing grew, and after about 4 or 5 days it really started to stink.  Not impressed.  A friend of mine suggested I look into sunflower sprouts and showed me this sprouter:

You can find it on Amazon for $12.  And let me tell you what :) it's great.  I tried 1/2 cup or so of wheat for my first shot, and soaked it overnight for 12 hours in the dark (i'm not 100% sure this is why i was making fermented wheat, but I believe it was, mine wasn't in the dark).

Day 2: Wednesday march 15th ~7am 
Strain the water, rinse with warm water.  Leave it in the dark.

Day 3: Thursday in the morning
Little sprouts are formed, looking pretty good.  After work, the sprouts are pretty long, time to plant.

I planted the 1/2 cup, which was now closer to at least 1cup.  I put some peat moss down, and put the seeds all spread out on the moss.  1/2 cup is probably only 1/2 as much as i need at least :), but this is the first test.

Day 4: After work, friday
Looking at the little plants:

They're doing really well, the roots are doing awesome.  Notice that i have the 1 black tray covered by the other black tray.  This helps keep all the light out while the roots grow together and the grass covers them up.  I added a little more peet moss on top of the roots, and watered it with some seaweed extract water (i happen to have it laying around, not sure it'll really help :) we'll see).

UPDATE:

This batch did terribly :).  They got all moldy.  The only real difference in my current batch (a good year later almost to the day) is that I have better trays.

You have to use 2 trays, one with tons of holes in it, and one without.

Here is my latest pictures, I think i'm on day 7 today and here are my pictures:

It's important to add water every day, notice how thick and
green this looks.  I add water now from the bottom.

This tray has tons of holes on the bottom, so the roots can
easily go below.  This allows the roots to pull up the water,
without having to have the dirt sit in the water which
caused mold last time.

These are the trays i use, with about 3/4 inch of dirt and
then the seeds.  They let all the water through so it
never gets moldy.

We'll see how this set does :).