Applied Research & Education · Twin Cities, MN
SproutSpace teaches household-scale cultivation of aquatic superfoods and gourmet mushrooms — crops that thrive on a windowsill, need no soil or prior experience, and belong entirely to the person growing them.
Wolffia globosa — Watermeal
The smallest flowering plant on Earth — each one about the size of a grain of sand. Mildly flavored, somewhere between spinach and corn, with a protein density that rivals soybeans. A staple in Thai cuisine for centuries. Almost completely unknown to American home growers, and remarkably easy to grow once you know how.
Lemna minor — Common Duckweed
A tiny aquatic green with a big reputation — studied by NASA for life-support applications, rich in protein and omega-3s, and capable of doubling in mass every couple of days under good conditions. Each frond is about the size of a lentil, floats freely, and tastes a bit like a mild leafy green. Thrives in a shallow tray on a sunny counter.
Pleurotus ostreatus
A fan-shaped, delicately flavored gourmet mushroom that grows readily on straw, spent coffee grounds, or wood chips — no specialized equipment, no grow tent required. Fruits in as little as two weeks and is one of the most forgiving crops a first-time grower can start with. Delicious roasted, sautéed, or dried, and a genuine gateway to the wider world of fungi.
Workshop Tracks
You learn faster by doing, and you remember more when you leave with something alive. Every SproutSpace workshop is built so a complete beginner can succeed — and every system you build is designed to be understood, fixed, and taught without special tools or hard-to-find materials.
You'll learn to grow Wolffia and Lemna in a simple tray system. The class covers what these plants actually are, why they grow so fast, what they need (more light than you'd think, less everything else than you'd expect), and how to harvest and use them in the kitchen.
You'll build your own grow tray during the workshop. We cover a range of nutrient approaches — from off-the-shelf hydroponic nutrients to DIY methods that close the loop in a way that feels genuinely satisfying. We'll also cover how to treat city tap water for chloramine, so your plants aren't fighting your water supply from the start.
You leave with:
A full introduction to oyster mushrooms, from substrate to your first harvest. You'll culture spawn, build a 3-gallon grow bucket to take home, and learn how to manage substrate, sun-charge for Vitamin D2, dry and store your harvest, and safely identify what you've grown.
You leave with:
Why It Matters
SproutSpace doesn't fix the supply chain. It offers something the supply chain can't: a growing system that works anywhere there's light and water, owned entirely by the person tending it.
Our Story
SproutSpace grew from a personal reckoning. Our founder's earliest memories involve growing food and sharing it with neighbors — and a career in software development and agricultural systems technology deepened that instinct into expertise. After leaving that career to care for a family member through illness, the abstract became immediate: how quickly time, income, and food quality get tangled up when a household is under stress.
The question wasn't how to optimize the supply chain. It was what real nutrition could look like inside the constraints of an ordinary home — without depending on that chain at all.
The answer was a category of crops largely passed over by large-scale agriculture, paired with methods simple enough to learn in an afternoon and teach your neighbor the following week. SproutSpace applies a background in robotics, precision agriculture, and industrial food systems to the smallest viable unit of resilience: the household.
Workshops · Twin Cities, MN · Launching 2026
SproutSpace is launching hands-on pilot workshops in the Twin Cities beginning in 2026! Join the list to hear when registration opens and to get open-source growing guides as they're published.
No spam. Unsubscribe any time. Just workshops, open-source guides, and the occasional duckweed update.
Get In Touch
Whether you're interested in attending a workshop, bringing SproutSpace to your school or library, exploring a partnership, or just curious about the world's smallest flowering plant — we'd love to hear from you.
SproutSpace works with schools, libraries, sustainability organizations, and community groups to bring hands-on cultivation education into your community. Every session is science-based, accessible for all ages, and genuinely practical — participants always leave with something growing.
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