Getting Your Winter Greens - Micro Greens!

I've got so much spring fever right now that I'm counting the minutes to the spring equinox on March 20. As of right now there are 43,200 minutes left. Too many minutes? Okay, we're just thirty short days away, in sight for sure.

In between seed shopping and attending green industry trade shows I've been seeding micro-greens for a green thumb fix. And if you're far from being a green thumb, no worries, you cannot and I mean, you cannot mess up seeding, growing and enjoying micro-greens.

First, the what-how-where -

Micro-greens are the first seedlings of plants that are normally seeded outside and harvested when fully grown like lettuce, broccoli, basil, sunflowers, peas or custom seed mixes of cress, chard, mustard and many more. You can purchase specific micro-green labeled seeds from garden centers and online or use left over seeds from your cache. One caution - parsnip seeds used for micro-greens are poisonous so use them only for outside seeding to grow parsnips until they mature.

The taste of these little guys is soooooooooo good and awesomely fresh. Use them on soup, pasta, sandwiches, eggs and any vegetable dish. Tossing them on your morning cereal might be a stretch, but not in the juicer!

Basil seeds from my cache

The how takes about ten minutes, maybe less. Clean and rinse a spent plastic lettuce container (or any low container), poke some holes in the bottom if there aren't any drainage areas. Fill 3/4s with moistened sterile seed starting or a very light weight potting soil. Heavily sprinkle micro-green seeds or left over seeds over the soil, then add a very light layer of soil over the seeds. Water them well using a sprinkler type head instead of heavy hosing with a regular pour type nozzle which can move the seeds and soil around too much. 

Where - put a tray under the plastic container and place near a very sunny window or under grow lights. Water when they look slightly dry, about every other day - they can dry out quickly, keep any eye on them. In about seven to ten days you'll be harvesting fresh little micro-bursts of whatever seed you planted. To harvest, just cut a handful of greens right above the soil line, you don't even need to rinse them unless some soil is holding on.

If you love micro-greens, plan on seeding several batches and stagger them over the winter. Once harvested you can re-use the soil several times, unless gnats find them or disease is suspected. 

Second, the flavor - wow! 

Basil Micro-Greens over Vegetarian Red Pepper Quinoa Pasta!

For more growing how to photos click HERE.