Microgreens are good for you! Microgreens contain a concentration of nutrients essential for your health. Growing them through the winter months will help bridge the fresh greens gap! Now, if you’ve been trying out season extension methods, you may still be reveling in all the fresh greens you like for a bit. But if you’re like many folks, you may not have much more space for gardening than a few containers on the balcony or patio. Fear not! This gardening adventure is for ALL!
There are several emerging areas of conversation and research around this topic. Our main point of interest with the development of Microgreens has been, first, a response to many requests for them from customers. Secondly, they continue to fascinate us as we learn more about them.
If you would like to find out for yourself and consider the possible health benefits of microgreens, check the linked reputable sources below, largely featuring studies from the National Library of Medicine, which detail several!
This in-depth study showcases the many benefits overall, stating that microgreens are "overloaded with an abundant level of various phytonutrients, varying according to the nature of the plants that are selected to produce the microgreens."
The blends we have developed this year have been created from Brassicas (broccoli and mustard greens, among others) and include Lactuca or lettuces mainly. We also developed the Pesto Lovers Delight which is ALL BASIL, Ocimum basillicum!! The benefits of these different varieties are covered in the linked articles.
Why we care and want to share! You can grow them quickly, no matter how much space you have to work with! You can reap the benefits of your efforts within a very short time frame, compared to the lifecycle of fully matured crops—generally 2-3 weeks for sprouts, and just a bit longer for baby salad greens.
"Start small" is the common wisdom of experienced gardeners and farmers. It’s an excellent way to develop a taste for gardening… literally! It doesn’t get much smaller than this!
Things to try (we dare you):
- Follow the planting directions for each of our microgreen mixes, detailed on our website! You can enjoy about 3 rounds of sprouts using these methods.
- Revel in even more if you choose to selectively harvest some and grow out more for baby salad greens.
- Go bigger! Try them in a few containers outside in warmer weather (when daytime temperatures are between 50-65°F). Cover them overnight when temps drop below 40. This is where small-space gardeners and folks working with raised beds or backyard plots have an advantage!
We’ll let you in on a little secret now. We waited for YEARS to explore microgreens, mainly because we felt it was a waste of seed. Shocking right? Not really. The same seed used for our microgreens can be used to grow hundreds of bunches of fresh greens over months of the year! We didn’t want folks to miss out on that abundance! Thanks to the many requests we received from people to begin developing microgreens, we are now participating in all these discoveries with you.
Thank you for all that feedback, folks who wanted microgreens!
If you’re relatively new to gardening, you can use the very same packet of microgreens (or a new one for less than the price of a latte) and seed them over a regular-sized garden bed! Selectively harvest and thin through their growth stages, and allow the strongest to continue growing into full-sized plants! Heck, you might even leave the very best-looking plants alone so they go to seed and start to discover the magnificent world of saving your own seed! [Link]
Just a radical note, larger-scale gardeners and urban farmers work within the parameters of the growing season, and some utilize season extension methods as described here. When you start to garden on any scale, you’re beginning to get a feel for the work involved in growing good food, and in so doing, you’re connecting with the culture of agriculture, from the seedy start!
The point is that anyone can reap the benefits of greens! We just want you to know!
