Growing microgreens update

On Dec. 9, I wrote a blog post about growing microgreens. It also included a video on how to accomplish this.

As a quick recap, microgreens are young seedlings that you harvest once they’ve developed their first true leaves. Since I live in a Northern climate where the growing salad greens like lettuce year-round is virtually impossible, growing microgreens seemed like a perfect alternative.

I wanted to give you an update on how things are going and what I’ve learned:

My initial plantings were sunflowers and lettuce. We’ve had a couple of cuttings of sunflowers because the seeds germinated at different rates. As a quick reminder, harvesting sunflower seedlings is the exception to the microgreens rule because it’s done before they develop true leaves, which are bitter and hairy.

Once the first sunflower seeds were done germinating and harvested, I planted another crop of sunflowers so we can harvest more. The seedlings are quite delicious and have a nice, tender texture. For this second planting of sunflowers (using the same seedling flat to grow them in), I decided to experiment and see if seeds need to be covered with a bit of soil. It looks like sunflower seeds don’t necessarily need that covering, which would save both time and seedling mix (soil). But I haven’t done enough of this yet to know if it applies to all types of seeds grown for microgreens.

The flat of lettuce seedlings is now ready to be harvested. I let them go a little longer because I didn’t have to worry about them turning bitter like I did with the sunflowers. The seedlings are quite short and I’m wondering if cutting them will be a bit of a pain because of that. We shall see.

I recently purchased a second tier of grow lights for my microgreens set-up (see my review of the Stack-n-Grow light system) so now I can really get into microgreens production! My goal is to stagger the plantings so we have newly-planted seeds and flats of seedlings ready to be harvested.

Yesterday, I planted two more flats: one with peas, the other with a mix of Brassicas. As I mentioned in my microgreens video, pea shoots taste just like fresh, young peas, so I’m really excited about growing them. The pea flat is seen in the photo to the left and you’ll notice I tried to plant the seeds in rows, more or less. That’s because my husband, Bill, was thinking that would make it easier to harvest the seedlings later. I’m willing to experiment with things like that and will let you know what I think later.

I bought my seeds through SproutPeople.org after a friend highly recommended them. I was pleased with their prices and happy with how quickly they shipped my order. But even more importantly, their seeds are organic and non-GMO. (Yes!!) So I’m happy to recommend them to you now.

The other thing I wanted to share with you is the storage of microgreens. I’ve found that f you wash greens and gently toss them in a salad-spinner to dry, the greens will keep for quite a long time in the refrigerator. Once washed, I put mine into a resealable plastic bag. If you put wet greens into the refrigerator, they will quickly turn to mush.

Stay tuned for more updates…