Editor's note: This article is based on new book by Peter Burke, called Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening. I would like to personally note that I ordered this book after listening to Peter Burke on our podcast and am absolutely in awe of his method and plan to start my own indoor soil sprout garden in the next few weeks! 

Just because the temperatures have started to drop doesn't mean you have to live without fresh greens until next Spring. With author and gardener Peter Burke's innovative method of growing soil sprouts indoors, you can grow nutrient-dense greens all year long at a fraction of the cost of buying at market.

Burke's new book, Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening, is an inviting guide for both first-time and experienced gardeners in rural and urban environments. No matter what size home you live in, there's room for a garden of soil-grown sprouts. In fact, Burke has grown up to six pounds of greens per day using just the windowsills in his kitchen. And, since they grow so quickly—less than 10 days from seed to salad—soil sprouts can be an engaging indoor project for kids. 

In his book, Burke provides detailed step-by-step instructions to master this simple method of growing greens. The only tricky part is understanding how different growing soil sprouts is from standard outdoor gardening. One of the first steps is placing your tray of seeds and dirt in a dark cupboard, not a typical place for your average plant. In the excerpt below from Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening you'll learn all the ways growing soil sprouts runs counterintuitive to gardening and how these tricks not only make sense, but really work!

6 Reasons Why Growing Soil Sprouts is Counterintuitive to Gardening

By Peter Burke

Growing soil sprouts runs counter to much of what I always held true about gardening in general. When I try to explain soil sprouts to my farming friends and gardening buddies, they often have trouble understanding the concept at first. I know what bothers them: They think that if they plant 70 sunflower seeds or 150 broccoli seeds, their crop will be enormous compared to the tray of greens I describe.

One farmer complained, "It is so seed intensive." He thought too many seeds were required, and he dismissed the idea. He reasoned that one mature sunflower could produce easily hundreds of seeds, or each full-grown plant a large head of broccoli. Why harvest the sprouts before they've had a chance to produce their full yield?

But when you look at it in a different light, it makes sense. No one would call it "seed intensive" to grind up wheat berries or corn kernels— which are viable seeds—to make bread or object to boiling rice to make dinner. Soil sprouts are just another way—a different way—to eat seeds. Rather than grinding or boiling I grow them for a short time. Plus many of the seed varieties that I grow for greens wouldn't be used as food themselves, like radish seeds and broccoli seeds. With my methods, seeds that could only be planted in the outdoor garden in the past can now be used to grow fresh greens indoors. They've found a useful place in the pantry as winter food. An indoor salad garden can even work as a full-time garden for those who live in apartments or condominiums with no other place to grow their own food.