[Petronius_II]

CAUTION: If long-windedness offends you, consider yourself warned, LEAVE NOW.

From my (somewhat limited) experience, but fortified by a whole lot of reading, I'd say all of the following are important factors:

--After soaking the beans, you do want to put them wrapped in some kind of paper before you put them into a jar or plastic bag or clean chip-dip container or whatever. As far as the paper is concerned, I prefer some kind of plain brown paper because it's unbleached, and the brown coffee filters do the trick just fine, but really, in most cases a paper towel is good enough. But, when you put it in the container, it should be just lightly moist, not damp.

-- Instead of leaving your bag slightly opened, you would've done better to twist it or ziploc it or whatever, so it's completely shut. Hermetically sealed, one way or another. Mason jars are good for this, but so are any other number of containers. The way you make sourdough starter is just to leave some moist flour exposed to ambient room air, where all the little yeasties that just float around in the air can land on it and start fermenting the carbohydrates in the flour. Same principle applies to your moist beans.

-- It's best if the container, when you're not fiddling with it, is in a place where it will be both warm and at least somewhat dark. Almost all common vegetables sprout fastest in the 80-85 degrees F range, though there are a few who like it cooler and I'd have to go find my copy of Nancy Bubel's book to tell you what they are. (Kent Whealy's "Seed to Seed" also comes highly recommended by those who've perused it. Both books are common in publicf libraries nationwide.) There are even a few who I'm pretty sure like it even warmer, like eggplant, for example.

The point being, seeds really want a somewhat warmer temperature to germinate in the first place, than they will need to keep growing once they've germinated. Nancy Bubel says so, and she would know. I usually either place my germination containers on top of the refrigerator, where they catch the warm air coming up the back, or on a cupboard shelf up above the refrigerator. Not much warmer than the rest of the house, really, but a little bit. Moist brown paper also ensures a certain amount of darkness, which most seeds prefer, but don't absolutely need. A few seeds-- lettuce? foggy memory here-- actually require exposure to light before they'll germinate, but those species are few and far between. Again, either of the two books is good for checking up on the finer points.

-- Here's one of the most important things: The seeds and the paper need to be thoroughly rinsed each and every day. 48 hours without rinsing may be okay most of the time, but I try to keep it to circa every 24 hours and not forget to do so very much.

Tap water that's just a little warmer than lukewarm is about right for the purpose. The inside of the container should be rinsed, too, especially if you see any kind of faintly milky-looking coloration forming a film on the inside. That faint milkiness represents all kinds of micro-organisms setting up shop. It's not necessary to kill them, just get them the hell away from your precious little babies as best you can.

It almost goes without saying, if you see any kind of visible mold forming on the paper, change the paper. Any kind of visible mold on any of the seeds, discard the seed and rinse the remainder even more thoroughly.

That's one reason a lot of people prefer mason jars, I suppose, because it's easy to rinse out. But I've used all kinds of containers-- salsa jars, pickle jars, and ziploc bags. The chief virtue of ziploc bags is they're cheap and usually re-useable, which means if you have a lot of varieties you're trying to pre-sprout at the same time, let's say 8 different varieties of tomato seed, you can have a separate ziploc bag for each stashed away in very little space, and mark each one with an ordinary wax crayon so you'll know whether it's a Cherokee Purple or a Giant Belgium. Or whatever. (Not necessarily a consideration with beans, since most look so different from one another anyway.)

-- If all you're doing is a germination test, you want to declare a (somewhat arbitrary) stopping point anyway after you've found out, how many sprouted within five days? Eight? Fourteen? Et cetera...

...But if you're sprouting them with the intention of planting them, it's up to you to decide how soon to plant. It's often recommended to plant the whole batch as soon as the first few seeds have germinated, signified by the appearance of a little taproot coming out of one end. This is presuming that the others will be coming along shortly.

That's good advice for most people at most times. I like to let mine go a bit longer so I can be a bit more precise and economical with my planting. If, say, I've decided my bean or pea seeds are going to be planted about 2 inches apart and thinned to an average of about 4 inches apart, I can save myself some thinning by alternating already sprouted, unsprouted, already sprouted, etc. But that does mean I may have to be putting sprouts in the ground that already have fully developed little taproots, an inch or two of stem, and a pair of cotyledon leaves. Maybe even their first set of true leaves. Sprouts like that have to be handled like Faberge eggs. Very delicately and carefully. If they do already have leaves, it's okay to plant in such a way that the leaves are already above ground, but not if they're going to be exposed to harsh sunlight right away; if it's outdoors you're planting them, I'm sure creative minds can think of some way of giving them some partial shade for the first day or two.

PARENTHETICAL TO ALL OF THE ABOVE: If the homeschooling kids want to not only germinate some seeds, but plant them, in a month or two will be the perfect time to put out snap peas or snow peas, either of which tend to be immensely popular with kids. And if you want to try pre-sprouting your seeds between paper again, it might be fun to conduct a little experiment while you're at it:

... EXPERIMENTAL GROUP, half the seeds: After your first rinse, about 24 hours after the seeds are squirreled away in moist paper for the first time, lightly dust your freshly-rinsed paper with a pinch or two of finely powdered cinnamon.

-- CONTROL GROUP: Everything the same, but no cinnamon for the other half.

If you decide to try the experiment, please do let the rest of us know if you see a significant difference in mold growth, rotting seeds, etc., between the two groups. Minimum of 50 seeds per group recommended.