Micro Greens

[NarnianGarden]

Anyone growing microgreens in the wintertime? I think it's the safest way to get the nutrents of kale, broccoli, mizuna and many others that easily get infested with aphids and larvae. Really excited to have started some seeds already - it's such a handy way to get some inexpensive and nutritious greens in this time of the year.

[biscgolf]

i grow micros all year- it's what i do for a living.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by biscgolf

i grow micros all year- it's what i do for a living.

A great enterprise! I wish you continued success.

[Ken4230]

Originally Posted by biscgolf

i grow micros all year- it's what i do for a living.

I have thought about building a small raft or doing something with the Kratsky Method.
Right now, all i do is use coffee cans in a south facing window to grow a leaf lettuce mixture and some green onions.

My lettuce, onions and radishes are normally planted on Valentines Day. If my beds were ready,
i would sprinkle the seeds right on the snow cover like we do to sow clover for deer.

Ken

[FarmerShawn]

Since it is way too early to start tomatoes here, my grow lights are busy growing microgreens. I have 9 four-foot fluorescent fixtures covering three shelves in my basement. I find arugula to be the easiest, most reliable and tasty one to grow, although broccoli and radishes are pretty foolproof, too. I really like sunflowers, peas, and basil, as well, but they can be a bit fussier. The peas are nice because I can get 3 or 4 cuttings from them, while the others are one-shot deals. I'm still refining my methods, but I use Pro-Mix in standard greenhouse flats. Those intense, spicy micros really add zing to a sandwich!

[NarnianGarden]

Yes, I need to try aragula, too. Had pea shoots for the last two weeks, they really grow back after the initial clipping. Peas just takes so much space in my limited indoor garden, I'll stick with the smaller greenies.
Sprouting is another popular method to get your vitamins, but I am not too fond of that any more - it can be quite fussy.
It just happens I purchased a thousand broccoli seeds some time back - they are going to be used and grown for salad way before the frost is gone and they could be planted outdoors.

I would love to see some photos of microgreens growing. I ordered a kit last year and grew 1 crop that was a flop, and have not tried since. I have all the seeds & equipment to do it

[luigiwu]

can I second the motion to see some pictures, especially from FarmerShawn? I can't believe you can do sunflowers, peas and basil too! It sounds like the soil depth is shallow (the standard greenhouse flats?) so I'm super curious!

[Fred Hempel]

We have found that the key to microgreens is the soil. It is a situation where you get what you pay for: Good soil gives uniform production. Spotty soil results in a mess of spotty germination and unequal growth.

Of course this doesn't apply to "ponic" situations. I have seen beautiful uniformity and vigorous growth in aquaponic systems.

[FarmerShawn]

I have purchased most of my supplies (seeds, mostly) from here:
http://www.growingmicrogreens.com/
I tried/am trying the compostable mats, hoping for a cleaner harvest, but I didn't like the first round with them. I actually had some damping off in some areas of the flats, and watering is much more fussy with the mats; I can skip a day with the potting mix, and the greens will forgive me. Not so with the mats; they dry out too quickly. I had better luck with straight Pro-Mix. So now I'm trying potting soil topped with a mat, to see if I get a cleaner harvest and good growth. (Mostly I am trying to use up the 10-pack of mats I bought!)
Microgreens don't really need fertilization, because, except for the peas, they are harvested before they need any. After the first cut on the peas, I bottom-watered with dilute worm compost tea, which gave them a nice boost for the next cut. With the sunflowers, you have to be careful to harvest them before they get their true leaves. Then they taste kinda like sunflower seeds, and have a delightful crunch, and are really quite large! But they quickly get tough and lose their wonderful flavor when the true leaves show up. (I just learned that - guess how!)
If I have time soon, I'll try getting photos, but I just seeded a new batch yesterday, so I don't have much to show at the moment, though I noticed that the arugula and tat soi were already sprouting! The exciting part is that harvest is in 10 days to two weeks! Can't wait!

[bower]

I usually grow baby greens and cut and come again under the lights in winter, but so late getting started this year, I decided to try a batch of microgreens with the kale seed I saved from my garden.

I put the lights really close to them, and whoops, the tray was a bit wider than the lights, and what a difference. The rows that got the light are way ahead, those on the sides were slow to germinate and are about or less than half size. It is extra cold this year, and the lights are the only heat source too. (First time I've ever seen brassica seeds take five days to germinate!).

[NarnianGarden]

FarmerShawn: For the sunflower shoots, do you use hulled seeds?

[FarmerShawn]

Sunflower seeds are whole, with shell intact. Actually, although you can get sunflower seeds from the site I referenced before, for my sunflower seeds I went to the local feed store (Agway) and bought bird seed - black oil sunflower seed - for much cheaper. It works just fine. Sunflowers apparently don't work well hydroponically, and while most seeds for the microgreens I've grown are just sprinkled on the surface and left uncovered but moistened to sprout and grow, sunflowers work much better if they are covered with the potting soil. I do have to spend some time picking a few hulls off the harvested leaves; it is not hard, just a bit time consuming. Beets and chard are like that, too. I'm just now experimenting with cilantro - I'm guessing it likes to be covered, but I'll know more soon.

[biscgolf]

pretty much all the larger seed likes to be covered. i lightly cover even the small seed primarily to hold it in place when i water. some seed also germinates better in a darker environment and covering lightly helps with that as well.

[biscgolf]

buywholesalecheap.com is a good source for relatively inexpensive microgreen seed. hard to beat on quantities of a pound or so.

i use metromix 360 for micros- it is a relatively fine mix and wets evenly which is a key. avoid mixes with a lot of bark if you can. i also don't really like perlite in my mix. i have tried the mats but found them to be a step down from soilless mixes. they get really expensive when you are planting 450 trays a week as well.

for sunflower i recommend going to your local feed store and asking for peredovik sunflower seed.

i grow arugula, radish, pea shoots, shungiku and brassicas year round. in the warmer months we add sunflower, buckwheat, and various basils. in the winter we add cress.

i'll see if i can post some pics in the morning... time to go lose my lunch money playing poker now.