Wheatgrass at Home: A Little Patch of Green You Can Harvest Yourself

thecropstopfarm

Oct 4

4 min read

What if part of your grocery shopping happened right on your kitchen counter?

At Crop Stop, we're always experimenting with ways to make locally grown food a little more accessible, useful, and fun. One crop we've been growing lately is incredibly simple, wonderfully green, and surprisingly versatile: Wheatgrass.

And, we're working on a new way to offer it. Rather than harvesting and packaging wheatgrass for you, Crop Stop will be offering living wheatgrass trays grown to order. You'll take the entire growing tray home, place it in a bright spot, and cut what you need when you need it. A tiny living crop, right at home.

So, What Exactly Is Wheatgrass?

Wheatgrass is the young green growth of the common wheat plant, harvested while it is still grass rather than being allowed to mature and produce wheat berries.

Its bright green blades contain chlorophyll along with various vitamins, minerals, flavonoids, phenolic compounds, and other plant compounds.

You'll sometimes see some pretty extraordinary health claims attached to wheatgrass online. We prefer to keep things grounded here at Crop Stop. Wheatgrass is a nutrient-containing plant food, but research into many of its proposed therapeutic effects remains limited. Reviews of the medical literature have found promising areas of research, but the human studies have generally been small and aren't strong enough to support many of the sweeping health claims sometimes made about wheatgrass.

For us, that's perfectly fine. Not every vegetable needs to be a miracle cure.

Sometimes it's enough to simply grow another nutritious green food and enjoy it fresh.

Cut What You Need, When You Need It

This is the part we're especially excited about. Instead of Crop Stop cutting the wheatgrass and putting it into another package, our trays will remain alive and growing when they go home with you. Need a little? Snip a little. Want more? Harvest more. The rest stays growing in the tray until you're ready for it. There's something wonderfully simple about walking over to a patch of living greens in your own home and harvesting what you're about to use. And, that's exactly the kind of connection with food we want Crop Stop to encourage.

Your Cat Might Be Interested, Too 🐈🌱

You may have seen little containers labeled “cat grass” at pet stores.

That's because cat grass isn't one particular houseplant. Products sold under that name commonly use young cereal grasses such as wheat or oats. The ASPCA specifically discusses cat grass as a green snack for cats. So a living wheatgrass tray can potentially serve another member of the household, too. If you're growing a tray specifically for a pet, make sure it hasn't been treated with anything inappropriate for animals, and remember that even non-toxic plants can cause stomach upset when an animal eats enough of them. And, knowing cats, we suspect some of them will decide the Crop Stop wheatgrass tray belongs exclusively to them. 😂

Why Sell the Whole Tray?

Because we want you to experience the growing part. A living wheatgrass tray sits somewhere between buying produce and growing your own food. Crop Stop starts it for you. We handle the germination and early growing process. You receive an established tray of living wheatgrass. Then, the scissors are yours. It's an especially approachable way for someone who doesn't have a backyard, raised beds, or a hydroponic tower to experience harvesting food at home. Apartment? Fine. Small kitchen? Fine. Never grown anything edible before? Also fine.

A Small Experiment in Food Independence

Will a tray of wheatgrass make your household self-sufficient? Of course not.

But that's not really the point. We've talked a lot at Crop Stop about the idea that food security doesn't have to begin with acres of farmland. It can begin with learning how something grows. Planting herbs on the patio. Growing lettuce on the counter. Joining a community garden. Supporting a local farmer. Or, yes, keeping a small tray of something edible growing in your kitchen. Every little bit of knowledge gives us another option. That's why we're particularly excited about expanding the living side of Crop Stop. Sometimes we'll grow the food and harvest it for you. And, sometimes we'll get it started and let you make the harvest.

Coming to Crop Stop 🌱

Our Living Wheatgrass Trays will be grown to order, so your tray isn't sitting around waiting for someone to buy it. You'll place your order, we'll start your crop, and once it's ready, you'll take home a living tray that you can harvest as needed.

For your kitchen. For your smoothies or other culinary experiments. Or, perhaps for the four-legged household member who decides the entire thing was clearly grown for them. 🐈 Either way, we're excited to put a little more growing food into local homes.

Grow what you can. Buy local when you can't. Know where your food comes from.