This tutorial goes over how to grow pea shoots using the double bucket technique, from start to finish. Pea shoots — which come from either snow or sugar peas — have myriad health benefits and make a terrific addition to salads and stir-fry. These microgreens are jam packed with nutrients, including vitamins A, B-6, C, E, and K as well as folate, thiamine, and riboflavin.
The method I will go over today is intended for larger yield, but you can scale down as long as you maintain the ratios of seeds and water. Like most sprouts and microgreens, pea sprouts are easy to grow and perfect for the novice urban farmer. If you follow my instructions to the letter, you’ll be enjoying some delicious pea sprouts in a week and a half or less!
1. Making your double bucket (Day 1)
As the name suggests, you will need two buckets for this. We are using the 5 gallon buckets, as you can sprout a lot of seeds in a container this size. Take one bucket and drill many tiny holes in the bottom: ensure that the holes are at least ½ the size of the seeds you want to soak in the bucket. The other bucket will hold the water.
Once you are done drilling holes into the bottom of the bucket, make sure you clean it off, so the tiny plastic bits don’t go into your seeds. This is a crucial step because you don’t want residual plastic in your seeds — which you’ll eventually eat!
2. Sprouting your seeds (Days 1 and 2)
🌱 Day 1: Soaking your seeds
Cross-section of double bucket sprouting
- In the top bucket — the one with holes — pour in the desired amount of seeds for sprouting. When it comes to peas, it’s around 1 cup per tray.
- Take the bucket to a sink and run water over it to clean off the seeds thoroughly. Allow the excess water to drain out through the holes, which will act like a sieve.
- Place the bucket with the seeds into the water bucket and fill it up with water. Peas drink a lot of water, so make sure you add two to three times the amount of water as there are seeds.
- Cover the top bucket with a cloth or lid to prevent anything getting into your seeds.
- Let it sit for 6 to 12 hours.
💡 Remember: 1:2~3 seed to water ratio
🌱 Day two: Draining and airing out your seeds
- After 6 to 12 hours, take the seeds out of the water, move the buckets over to the sink, and lift the upper bucket into the sink. Let the water drain from the seeds.
- Rinse the seeds with clean water until the water runs clear.
- Rinse the water bucket and stack the two again, placing the top bucket with the sprouts on a 45° diagonal tilt above the water bucket. This will allow the sprouts to breathe optimally and prevent them from getting nasty.
- Cover the top bucket with a rag.
3. Planting your seeds (Day 3)
Add soil to bucket 
Add water to soil 
spread thin layer of soil
Now it’s time to prepare your trays for planting! First, we are going to ready the dirt for planting: take soil out from the bag and place it in a bucket, roughly 5 cups per tray. Add water to the soil and mix it up with your hand. You want to have the soil to be moist not wet, this means it is able to hold together when you squeeze it but not drip water out. Lay a thin layer of the moist soil into your trays, around 1″ thick.
- Usually by day 3, the pea shoots will have a 1-2 cm long tail sprouted out of them, which means that they are ready to plant. If this is the case, you may follow the rinsing instructions from days 2 and 3 while preparing the soil for planting.
- Once the soil is moistened, lay out a tray for every cup of seeds that you soaked.
- Spread an even layer of seeds along the soil, ensuring that the seeds are not on piled atop one another, or else they will be fighting for nutrients to grow. This will result in the competing seeds sprouting out small or not at all. Ensure the seed coverage is dense, but not stacked.
- Once all the trays are planted, stack four trays on top of each other, placing an empty tray on top. Place the stack on the bottom shelf of the cultivator, with the lights disconnected, as this phase requires darkness.
- On top of the empty tray, place a heavy weight, such as onyx stone plates. This will apply pressure for the sprouts to break through.
⚠️ Warning: Do not stack any more than 5 trays on top of each other because they become heavy to move and difficult to take out of the cultivator once they grow.
4. Stacking and misting your seeds (Days 4 and 5)
- Remove the stacks of trays from the cultivator and mist them with water. Use the sprayer nozzle attached to the sink to lightly and evenly water them until they look moist.
- Once all trays are misted, re-stack them, making sure to change the order of stacking — bottom trays on top, top trays on bottom.
- Place them back into the cultivator with the empty tray and weight on top.
5. Placing the sprouts under grow lights (Days 6 to 8)
- Remove the trays from the cultivator and check to see if most of the sprouts have broken through the soil. If so, thoroughly water each tray with about double the amount of water as mist. Some trays might only have 50% of the peas sprouted, which means they can stay in the dark another day. If they still don’t sprout the next day, just put them in the light anyway.
- Place the watered trays into the light, unstacked.
- Water the trays once a day until ready to harvest.
6. Harvesting your pea shoots (Day 9)
- Once the pea shoots have two little leaves pointing to either side, they are ready to harvest. This may happen any time between days 7 to 9, so just keep an eye on the sprouts and use the pictures for reference.
- Use scissors to grab bunches of sprouts and cut them as close to the stem as possible.
- Once they are all harvested, place them in a large bag or container with sufficient air inside so that they can breathe and not get mushed together.
- Label the container or make a note to yourself, “Best before 1 week.”
- Toss the soil from the harvested trays into a large clear recycling bag and compost at the end of the night. Do not try to dispose of them in the compost or garbage bags, as they are too weak and will break.
⛑ Facing issues? Troubleshoot your microgreens here.
