How to Grow Microgreens from Start to Finish (COMPLETE GUIDE)

How are you all doing? Kevin from Epic Gardening here. Today we are

grow

ing a powerful superfood called

microgreens

. You may have heard of these before or are familiar with

grow

ing sprouts, which are close cousins ​​to

microgreens

. But I think in today's video and in the process that we're going to follow, we're just going to talk in a very basic way, as you can see, with very little equipment to grow a lot of nutritious vegetables at home. Now, you know, I

start

ed gardening in an apartment and in a house, places where there was almost no light. And you know, this is one of the things you can grow no matter where you live.

I mean, you can grow them if you have a big, sprawling property, which I would be very jealous of, even on my property now I don't have a ton of space. But even if you live in an apartment, you can grow microgreens. So we have a lot of different types here. But before we really get into the nitty-gritty of how we're going to do this, I'm going to clear up probably some of the most common questions about microgreens in general. So the first question would be: are microgreen seeds different from normal seeds? And the answer is no.

These are exactly the same species, exactly the same plants that you would normally grow to full size, except for the fact that we are planting them much more densely than you normally would. Let's say you're making green broccoli, there's no way you're going to plant thousands of broccoli seeds next to each other if you're going to grow them all the way up. But in a microgreens situation you would, and that's because you're harvesting them very early in their life cycle. Maybe eight to 11 days for broccoli, one of the longest would be basil and even that is only 25 days.

And we all know that you can have basil that lasts all summer if you grow it until it matures. So that is one of the most common questions. The second most common question is where to get seeds. That's why I like to get mine at True Leaf Market or Everwilde Farms. Anywhere you can buy seeds in bulk will be a good idea. Because if you buy, for example, we have some green peas right here. If I had bought them in seed packets, I would be spending quite a bit of money to cover an entire tray. So without further ado, we'll get into the basic setup on how to grow microgreens.

Soil, etc., and also some different techniques depending on the type of seed, including soaking and how densely you're going to plant those seeds. So the first thing to talk about is the mid-ground. Now I'm using a very standard potting mix. It is very fine grained, although you can grow microgreens hydroponically if you wish. Or you can grow them in something like coconut fiber, which is an inert medium that doesn't provide much nutrition, but has the same textural qualities. Now, what you really want in your soil or any growing medium you use is for it to be fine grained.

You don't want too many of these large particles. And for that reason, purchasing something like garden soil or even some types of potting mix that contain a lot of wood products is not a good idea. And that's because when you're planting, the larger the particles, the harder it is for the roots to move. And that's why you want to avoid it, because you want nice, even growth throughout the tray. You want to get as many of these microgreens as possible. So what I like to do is take two cups of water and this is an unmoistened soil mix.

And I'll put the water in first. And what that will do is help prevent any kind of mold problems because all the water will be absorbed up through the soil mix instead of watered down and from the top. And in my experience, you can have a lot of mold and mildew problems if you do that. And I've also realized that one of the biggest killers of new growers' microgreen trays is the fungal problem, the appearance of that mold, that spider-like type of mold. So what I'll do instead, like you see me doing here, is pour water into the bottom and then fill from the top.

And then what we're going to do with our spray bottle here is once we've sewn in our seeds, we can go ahead and lightly spray them on top. And that's really all you'll need until you get some germination in these trays. Now, another little tip is that when growing your micros, you don't want to fill the soil to the brim because if you do, you will have some problems when it comes time to harvest. You know, you don't really need to wash microgreens when you harvest them, as long as you don't have any mold problems and you know exactly how they grew.

So the best way to avoid having to wash is to loosen the soil a little. You know, maybe a quarter of an inch, half an inch below the surface. And then when you run the scissors as you cut, you don't cut through the dirt or pull out the roots. That's what I like to do and this is all I would put here. And you can see that it's really nice, fine grained, without a lot of big particles. And I like to soften it. And if you want, you can even bring another tray and just give it a little pat to compress it slightly.

Don't go overboard here as you'll leave these little row patterns, so you'll want to smooth them out again because you don't want the seeds to clump together. But just give it a little compression to help the seeds stick to the soil once they

start

to germinate. That's all for our soil. Now we're going to get into a simpler seed and talk about how to actually plant it. So here I have white globe turnip seeds with purple tops, which is in the Brassica family. And you can see that the seeds are quite small. So the smaller the seed, the less you will need because they cover quite well.

So I've got about an ounce and a half here and let's go ahead and sprinkle it over the surface. As you sprinkle your microgreen seeds, I like to start from corner to corner and go like this and give it as even a distribution as possible. You don't need to go overboard and be very meticulous with it, but you just want to avoid large bags and clumps of seeds. So when we tamped the dirt, it was a good idea to smooth out those ridges. And that's why you want this soil to be as soft as possible when you start.

So you can see I'm distributing them evenly, just spreading them out. And a lot of times you'll miss the corners a little bit because you're afraid of spilling seeds and you won't plant in the corners. So just come in, make sure you use up all the seeds you used and you'll be in a really good place. Seems like a pretty even distribution for these turnips and I might even save some of this. It may have been a little over an ounce and a half, probably closer to two. This seems like a really good spacing to me, but I'm going to go ahead and spread the rest out here.

And that's all for sowing a small seed like turnips. Now that we've planted our seeds, we have a little bit of water coming out of the bottom of the tray if you remember, but we have to give them a little bit of water on top because that starts to trigger the germination process. That's why I like to give it a very light mist. There we go, just regular water, nothing fancy. Make sure you get the right coverage. It also helps adhere the seed to the surface of the soil where, once those roots start coming out, they will actually start to adhere instead of growing in a strange pattern.

So boom, let's just hit it with some water. Not too crazy, but enough to wet the surface. That's all we'll need. And then what I'll do, in this phase they don't need light. But remember that most of the time you bury these seeds under the soil if you are growing them in a normal gardening situation. We're not going to do that here. And so what I like to do, and this does two things. Firstly, putting a tray on top like this will block the light, although some seeds prefer darkness to germinate. In fact, I would say that most seeds prefer a little darkness to germinate.

But it will also provide a little bit of pressure that will simulate it being buried under the ground. Because remember that we just planted them on the surface. So that's what I'm going to do. Now what you have to do is sit and wait. Every day or two you can check it. Typically, for something like turnips in particular, it will take about three days to start germinating and those roots to start coming down. And then what you will see is that these will begin to rise. And then the tray will rise by itself. And then what you will see are some yellowish-looking leaves.

And they are yellow because they don't have any ability to photosynthesize yet because they haven't been exposed to light. And that's

complete

ly normal. Don't think your microgreens are unhealthy because of that. So we'll leave this alone and address a couple of other seeds that have more interesting planting, spacing, and germination requirements. One type of seed that is very popular for growing as a microgreen or even for juicing is wheatgrass. One of the most popular ones seen in juice stores all over the place. And as you can see, if we take a look at this seed here, I'll see if I can zoom in on it.

You can take a look at that seed and it is much larger and also a little harder. The seed coat is a little harder. And so from the instructions on this package, and just from my own experience, I know that you should soak this seed to improve germination rates before putting it in the trays like you just saw us do with those purple globes. turnips. Here on the back it says: soak for eight to 12 hours, rinse and drain, then place in a bowl or container to sprout. What I will do is place in the tray where we are growing our microgreens or in this case, our wheatgrass seeds.

So in this case, what I like to do with my microgreens, if I know I'm growing a lot of different types of soaking styles, is create a couple different bowls, I'll fill them with water and throw them in. in the container and then I will set several timers to know when that period ends. Because you don't want to soak them for too long, otherwise too much water will get in and they can actually drown, um, in water. They can start to rot and drown. It's not what you want. You just want to run a little water through the seed shell to start speeding up the germination process rather than just sowing these wheat seeds on the surface right on top without soaking them.

You will get uneven germination or the soil will have to be very moist for it to work, which also has its own problems. You know, you have that mold problem I was talking about. So we're going to go ahead and soak these varieties, as well as a few others, and replant. As I mentioned, the first one we're going to go in is going to be our wheatgrass. So we can leave that there. And I'm actually going to use the rest of this because I'm going to plant it quite a bit. So let's do the eight ounces, which I'm going to need to fill in a little bit more water.

No problem though. Next we have the brown peas. Peas are a fantastic microgreen and actually quite valuable if you were to sell them at a market, and also quite nutritious and delicious. So, you can see that the brown peas are much smaller than they end up once soaked and weigh between five and eight ounces per tray. So what I like to do is measure four ounces very quickly here. We'll do that and we'll do another four because I'll plant them pretty heavy as well. Here we go. These soak for about six to eight hours, maybe even up to eight to 12.

They soak for four. And then we also have the last soak of the mixture that we are going to grow in this demo: our sunflower seeds. So that will be here. These are black oil sunflower seeds, they are the best for microgreens. They look a little different. There are hundreds and hundreds of different types of sunflower seeds. As you can see, they are all black. They are not mottled, they do not have white stripes. I'm also going to use about eight ounces of these. These are soaked for about four hours. And in these, the colder the water, the better.

Um, I'm just using water from my filter so it's a little bit cold, so it'll be fine. And we're going to make eight ounces of these just because I want to make sure I have a little bit more. And it's not a big deal if you have more, you can always start with another tray. So we have our things soaking. I'll make sure to press them down and make sure they're all submerged. Nice and good. And we will return when we move forward and have them all soaked so we can plant them. As you can see, we have quite a few things soaking here.

We have our sunflowers, our peas, our wheatgrass, and actually an additional one that I just added: nasturtium. Nasturtium, an exceptionally delicious vegetable appreciated by chefs. I mean, you can go to a restaurant and sell them and it's pretty valuable, but it's also very, very nutritionally advantageous for you to eat them. So we have our two glasses of water. This is something I would recommend just as a base layer, you know, for your microgreens and for your nutrition. This is just a simple salad mix. I think it isextremely valuable to have that in your repertoire. You can get a basic mix, you can get a spicier mix that's a little bolder with those mustards and arugula.

But in general, I really like to have a basic salad mix ready at any time. Because remember you go to the store and buy, I don't know, a lettuce or certainly if you bought microgreens, the price is through the roof. And as you can see, we don't spend much on the production of these microgreens. You, your land is not that expensive, especially if you buy it in bulk. Your seeds, certainly for these cheaper seeds, aren't that expensive, right? Lettuce produces a ton of seeds per plant. That is why the price of the seed itself is relatively cheap.

I think the basic combination is maybe if you buy them, if you start buying them in pound increments, you can get them for $8 a pound of seed. Which is more than enough for 16 trays, which is way more than you'll want to consume in a week, no doubt. And honestly, that will fuel you for a month or more. So we're talking about $8 plus some land cost for a good amount of food for quite some time. So here we are preparing the seeds and, you know, I thought I'd go over a couple more questions about microgreens that I get frequently.

So one thing a lot of people ask is: does it matter if the soil is organic or if the seeds are organic? Now, that's certainly a much deeper question than I think is applicable to a microgreen scenario. I mean, the question of organic versus conventional is highly debated and controversial. I find it for myself, if I can, I will. But I have to remember that I can also grow them in a hydroponic environment where I just grow them like a coconut fiber mat. Technically, that's not certified organic. However, in my worldview of how I think about how that plant actually grows and the nutrition that goes into my body, I would certainly view it as an organic product just because I know exactly what I did to that plant.

So I would just caution you to pay attention to the fact that organic certification is very different from the method in which a plant is grown. You know, in organic produce, you can still use pesticides, you can still use fertilizers and you can still use fungicides, herbicides, right? They just have to be natural and not synthetic. So, you know, sometimes I think people make a differentiation or a false dichotomy between something that is natural being good and something that is synthetic being bad, right? Arsenic, a

complete

ly natural and naturally occurring compound, but you don't want to eat it.

And penicillin, certainly something that didn't occur in nature or certainly not in large quantities or had to be discovered and is completely a lifesaver for many people on this planet. So it's something to think about. But let's go ahead and sow this basic lettuce salad mix. So we have some arugula here. We've got some romaine lettuce, some regular leaf lettuce, and I think we've got a spicy kick with some of those mustards and mizunas, which is a tasty mix. I mean, this is really cool because you're growing what you would buy at the store, you know, a fragmented mix of things.

Just put different seeds in the same packet and you're good to go. So the same principles apply here. Nothing too sophisticated. We're just spraying. Nice and uniform. And that will be all for the planting section of this presentation. We'll move on to the dome blackout period or the germination period of these plants in just a second. So I hope you'll join me as I delete this and cover it up. Let's move on. So here we are in the garden shed. As you can see, there are a variety of microgreens waiting to sprout here. These are all the ones we have planted.

We have everything from salad mixes to chives and turnips, and some that we have soaked. Our wheatgrass, our nasturtiums, our sunflowers and our peas. Now you may be wondering, why aren't the lights on? Well, plants don't need light yet. Remember, they are germinating. They are starting their life. Almost no seeds, at least not these ones, need light to germinate, which is why we are going to cover them. You can see that we have these trays at the top, as I mentioned in the previous sections of this presentation, but we also have a couple of trays at the top.

Now why would you do that? Well, what I've seen from my friends who are large-scale commercial microgreen farmers now is that putting a little extra weight on top of the tray forces those seeds to fight a little harder, establish nicely, and grow. beautiful, healthy and strong. So when you start to see them appear, you know, okay, it's time to take the tray out, analyze it, and say, do we need to expose it to light? So what we are going to do is wait patiently for a few days. I may check in once or twice during the course of the germination process, but it's really a waiting game now.

As long as you place all of these trays correctly, the right soil, the right amount of water, the right soaking or non-soaking, depending on the type of seed, and the right seed distribution, then you'll be in a good place. All you have to do is cross your fingers, hope and hope that you have good germination in these trays. Then we'll be back in a couple of days. Well. It's been a few days, three days to be exact. I'm really curious to see what happens under these trays and we're going to talk about moving on to the next phase.

But first we must discover the magic. The nasturtiums look good. The sunflowers look good. The wheatgrass looks very good. The peas are growing well. Our salad mix, we have our chives a little slower, our alliums a little slower and our turnips are going absolutely crazy. So let's take a closer look at these for a second. So here are the nasturtiams. You can see that they are starting to germinate, but they are just larger, harder seeds, so they are a little slower. Sunflowers are doing very well. Wheatgrass, you can see it's yellow, but it's not a big deal because that's because it hasn't been exposed to light.

But this will grow quickly once we expose it to light. The pea shoots are growing very well. The salad mix, again, densely sown, very well spaced and yellow. But again, that's because there's no light. We are going to keep the onions still under cover because some roots are just now emerging. So we have to wait a little bit on that. And then we have our turnips. So now it's time to talk about how to use light for these microgreens. This is my favorite part of growing microgreens. When you actually turn on the lights, I don't know, something about the way the different microgreens grow and look, it's so fun to watch them grow like that.

So let's talk about these lights. You can use a couple of different lighting technologies. I really prefer LEDs or sunlight if possible. You can certainly grow them outdoors. No need to grow them in a shed like I do here. But just for the purposes of this presentation and for control, I think it's quite a bit easier to grow it under lights. You can control every aspect of growth. Certainly, when I was a commercial producer, that was paramount. If you grow at home, you could be a little more laissez-faire. Really do not care. But what you really need to think about is the location of the light.

So this is a 440 watt white LED I believe. It is not necessary to use something so extreme. It's just what I have on hand and it has a nice print. Footprint means the area on which the light is projected. I can cover one, two, three, four trays with this and honestly, I could even fit a fifth. Down here you can see that I have a different light. So this is a workshop lamp, like a T5 grow lamp. Very similar to the lights I have on the ceiling right now. It is fluorescent and that is why you can also use fluorescent lights.

The difference is that the energy consumption of an LED will be a little more efficient with the same power and the T5 fluorescent will also generate a little more heat. None of these should be a big deal when growing microgreens, but what I find most important is lighting placement. The closer you can get the light to the canopy of your trays, the better. The microgreens are going to be very hungry for light. You don't want them to stretch out or get etiolated, which is when they head into the sun, don't get enough sun, and just get a little thin and unhealthy.

You would prefer them to be bushy, compact, beautiful and healthy. And that means trying to place it as close as possible without overheating or burning the plants. So I could afford to zoom this in a little bit closer. Just for the purposes of the video, I have it a little higher up. But you could get away with a placement like this, as long as it still covers the number of trays you want to grow. Now, as for the weather, many people will recommend 12 versus 12, thus imitating daylight. You can get away with up to 16 on and eight off or you can get up to 18 and six.

The more light the better. You can observe your plants and make sure they don't react badly to excess light. Often remember that we are growing hundreds or even thousands of seedlings in a single tray. It's a good idea to give them plenty of light. So I have both set to the same timer. It turns on around 7 in the morning and turns off around 12 at night. So they get a lot, a lot, a lot of sun. What we're going to do is grow them all over the next three to 10 days, depending on the variety. Like I said, the chives are going to take a little longer, the nasturtiums are going to take a little longer.

But we're getting in and now is when you want to make sure and inspect. Do you want to make sure I have mold growth? If I do, you can combine it with some grapefruit seed extract. You can achieve this with a couple of different things to help you. Uh, I think grapefruit seed extract for small mold spots is like a good spot treatment to help. You don't have to throw away the entire tray, but if you let it get out of control, you will have to throw away the entire tray. So I would be very careful with mold.

You just want to make sure you can lift the trays up a little bit and you'll have an idea of ​​how much water that soil holds. If they feel light, give them a good water and just make sure they are well hydrated. Because remember that you are growing thousands of seeds in a small amount of land. All of those roots together will absorb a lot of that moisture from the soil, especially when they get a lot of light and are doing photosynthesis and using a lot of water in that process. So we're going to check it out over the course of the next few days and from there we'll continue and move on to the next phase of growing microgreens.

So here we are on the second day or, I guess, the first full day that we have light on these microgreens. You can see that they respond very quickly to light. They turn green and grow very, very quickly. So let's take a quick look so you can get an idea of ​​what they should start to look like after you start exposing them to light. First of all, let's check our nasturtiums. It definitely seems that covering them for a little longer has helped with germination, so they just germinate more slowly. Let's let them move on. Our sunflowers have really started to green up.

You can see them starting to arrive, which is exactly what we want. Over time, if you wish, you can remove the shells from these seeds and let them fall out. And you want to wait until it's a little bit thicker and then you can run your hands over the top. Wheatgrass grows extremely prolific and fast. It's green and I think you'll remember it was here yesterday so it's grown over an inch in the last 16 to 18 hours. It's like giving you a little pet here. Our peas are also starting to green up. Then our basic salad mix and our turnips are turning green like crazy and growing like crazy too.

These will probably be ready to harvest relatively soon. And then our onion, which we have left under cover, germination looks much better. You can see it's a lot whiter here, indicating a lot more root hairs and root hairs and taproots coming out. So we'll leave it covered until it gets over this line and we look good. We'll be back in a couple of days. Welcome back everyone. We are on day five or six. Things are looking very good here. As you can see the nasturtiums, I have removed the cover. We'll look at them closer in a second.

Show you a couple of errors that can occur. The sunflowers look very good. You'll notice again on these, when we do a close-up, the seed shells are still on. As they grow, we will want to brush them to make sure they shed. The wheatgrass looks great and some of these microgreens can be harvested right now. So what I'm going to do is go through a basic harvesting process to show you exactly how to do it, to prolong its shelf life, to make sure there's no contamination, and all kinds of other things. These are fun little tips, practically common sense.

But I thought thatIt would be better to cover it just in case. If this is your first time growing micros, you'll still have these questions. So here you can see the nasturtiums and you can see that these ones on the edges have really started to creep into the light because it's not a perfect seal when you put one of these trays on top. And then the seeds, even these ones from here, notice that the light or the photons are coming in from here and said, you know what? Let me go there. That's why you see this pattern of them crawling towards the light.

Now that the light is actually coming from a downward source, they're actually going to start straightening out and growing normally, but I could have gotten up to remove the cover a little earlier just to prevent that. Now you have your sunflowers, nice dark green, looking beautiful. Like I said, you can go through and do this and all of the seed shells, or at least most of them, will start to come off, which will help you with the cleaning process. Now the wheatgrass is ready for its first cut. It is between four and five inches long. We can go through and cut it right there and that will be a really good place to start harvesting and maybe even make some wheatgrass juice with this.

The pea shoots look great. You can see based on the placement of both lights, if you look you can see that all of these pea shoots are slightly curved this way and that's because this light source is actually stronger than this one and it's actually closer as well. that this . As you can see, these plants really respond to a healthy dose of light. And if you're working in interesting conditions where you don't have the exact lighting setup that you want, you can take this and maybe rotate it here, move this one here and you can play. musical chairs to make sure everything gets the right amount of light for enough time.

Basic lettuce salad mix, you can start to see differentiation in some of the seeds, some darker leafy varieties and some larger, broad leafed varieties. As we move on to the turnips, they look great and are also ready for their first cutting or in fact their only cutting. You can see that they are about three to four inches long, so it's time to cut them. And finally our chives broke free from their opaque dome. And that's why they smell very, very good. They are starting to green up. And what you'll notice with the chive seeds is that they are folded in half.

The first leaf structure that comes out is folded in half. And you can see this one right here, it's kind of bent. As soon as it starts to be exposed to light, that fold unfolds and it will go boop. And it will seem like they grow twice as much overnight, but in reality they are already that long and just need to unfold towards the light. We will see these chives very soon. I would like to harvest them when they are there. Here we are with our wheatgrass. It's time to harvest. And in fact, most of the time when I'm growing microgreens, I wouldn't use something like grass shears.

But we are growing wheatgrass, so it makes sense to use them. Now what you want to do is we had the soil a little bit below the top, but also the wheatgrass is one that you can cut and put back. So I try to cut a little higher so I don't remove every blade of grass that comes out of that center of the stem. And then I would cut maybe around this mark right there. So I just go and grab the top and cut it off and put it in my bowl here. Pretty simple process. Just come with my swords, grab this and cut.

Here we go. And we are fine. And then you can probably get two or three cuts of wheatgrass, which is really good. Unlike many microgreens, many microgreens can't really be made. So here's why, I mean, first of all, the seeds are really cheap and second of all, you can get three cuttings. You can mix it with any type of juice and it is a very good addition. So it's a basic microgreen for me. If I were growing them, you know, for direct nutrition, I would definitely have wheatgrass almost all the time. And you don't have to be too precise with your cuts.

Just pass, keep cutting. And let's resolve this briefly. Get a little dirty. Everything is alright. Now we have our tray. So here we have a bunch of wheatgrass microgreens, and we can also just give this tray a deep water. We definitely hurt these plants a little bit. Give it a deep water, throw it back under the lights, let it grow back and cut it off. But what are we going to do with all this wheatgrass? This is not the best juicer for this job, but it is the only juicer I have. So I'm going to throw a bunch of this wheatgrass over the top.

You chew it and you chew it, you spit out the fiber right here and the juice will fall right here. So let's go ahead and see if we get a good result. And here we go. It's not much, but it's maybe a couple of ounces of super-potent wheatgrass. And then what I like to do, since the taste of this directly isn't that pleasant to me, you can certainly just knock it down and that's completely fine. What I like to do is mix it with another juice. So I found some kumquats and turned them into juice. These are also super acidic, so you can't eat them alone either.

I usually just dilute it with water. I'm going to mix the two. We'll give you a little taste test. Honestly, the color, the color change is cool too. So change that. You should both calm down and then we'll have some juice. But you can do whatever you want with wheatgrass juice. I mean, you can mix it with other juices and throw it in a smoothie. You could make a ton and then freeze it and use it later. Lots of different things you can do. So let's move on. Health. Thanks for watching guys. That's much better. Yes, the tartness of the kumquat, maybe add a little orange juice.

Well. We are back. It's day seven. In fact, wheatgrass has already been through two cuts. We'll probably only get one more out of this. But the rest of the microgreens, besides the chives, are ready. So let's talk about the harvest in general. We'll talk about storage and then we'll even talk about how to use some of these microgreens. Many ways. Your imagination is kind of the limit, but I have my favorite ways to use them, so I'll share them with you. You can see that compared to how the nasturtiums started, all the stems started to straighten out.

They headed straight into the light and you have these beautiful classic nasturtium leaves. Honestly, I can even smell them from here. But this is going to be a super delicious nutritious tray. Of course, we could let this grow a little longer, but we'll probably harvest some. Then we have our sunflowers and these, some of them, were pushed down just because I just watered this tray. But you can see that most of the seed shells are removed and again you can continue doing this to remove them. But here's a nice, sturdy tray. As I mentioned, the wheatgrass is going through its third mowing now and is growing maybe an inch each day.

So it's crazy. The pea shoots look amazing, they look very cute. Uh, I mean this is like over a pound of pea shoots. You can see on the individual pea whether you have the seed leaves down here or not, it's actually a real leaf. Then some secondary leaves are shown. You also get some tendrils. So these are very, very mature. Our basic salad mix looks amazing. Probably four to six ounces in this tray right now. We have a huge amount of turnips, which I also just diluted. And then there are our chives, I mean, they could use another day or two, so I'm probably going to wait with the chives.

But the chives, a fantastic addition. And in fact, I also eat these seed shells. I really do not care. And that's why I don't try to get rid of many of them. Well. We're here on day 10, maybe 11, I think it's day 11. And as you can see, we've had quite a bit of growth. In fact, we may have even let some of these go on too long, which we can talk about. But first of all, let's review each of these crops. That is why nasturtiums have grown considerably. You'll get, I mean, almost a grocery bag full of nasturtiums just from this here.

We have our sunflowers in the back. Now these are the ones that, I don't know if they grew exactly how I would have liked. Sometimes you get a tray like this, so it's nice that I have it for illustration purposes. But you know, some of them died a little back here and they're just not as tall as I'd like. That said, they will still be really nutritious and delicious. So if you get a tray like this, sometimes you're just unlucky or maybe you didn't water exactly perfectly. Something like this happens to you. It's not the biggest problem.

We can still harvest this. We can still eat this. Next we have our pea shoots. This is a tray that worked very, very well. Watch this. You easily have over half a kilo of delicious pea shoots. Now, I personally, well, you know what? Then I'll tell you exactly what I like to do with these. Let's go over the rest first. We have our basic salad mix, which seems very healthy, and our turnips, which grew the fastest. I probably could have hoped to harvest them a little earlier because they are growing so much that they are actually starting to droop a little.

That's not a big deal. It just makes harvesting a little more difficult. It's very nice to show some of the problems you may encounter when it comes to harvesting. You can get trays that may look a little stunted. You may have planted a little too densely. You may not have watered enough. Some small pathogen may have gotten to parts of the tray, but not the bigger problem. You can certainly just wash them well, harvest them, and eat them. This one may have taken a while. Just harvest it a little earlier. That's one way to prevent this.

The chives here look very good. They are reaching that harvestable level. Without a doubt the longest harvest. But if you've ever had fresh chive microgreens, you'll know they're worth the wait. As for what I like to do to harvest. For larger trays, I will use grass shears. There are many different things you can use. You can use regular scissors, you can use micro-tip pruning shears, whatever you want. But if we're talking about something like a pea shoot, you could go in and cut it like this. The same inside the nasturtiums. For, you know, lettuce salad mix or turnips, for example, I think it's better to use micro tips or smaller scissors because then you can grab and cut however you need.

You can leave the rest on the tray and then you will have it as fresh as possible. For things like chives, again, those micro tips are really good because chives will grow for quite a while and most of us don't use tons and tons of chives at one time. Well. So here we are and I thought what I would do is just harvest some of the pea shoots, one of the easiest to harvest with these grass shears. But like I said, you can use many different cutting instruments. It really depends on you. I usually like to get a big bowl and then harvest it outside and bring it into the kitchen.

And we will go over the storage process a little. But, you know, just go through and trim about an inch above the soil surface. Then you are not collecting dirt. These are fresh, completely clean microgreens that do not need to be washed. I would caution that advice though, you know, I'm not a food safety expert. I personally don't wash mine because I know how I grew them and I know not to get dirty and I know there are no pathogens or anything like that. So I don't wash them. However, I wouldn't say it's a general recommendation.

But we just got by. Let's get this whole tray out. So I would say if you're new to growing microgreens, the ones that I'm showing you that would be good recommendations for you would be these pea shoots. I would say any of these greens, turnips, basic salad mixes or anything in the brassica family: kale, kohlrabi, collards, broccoli, cauliflower. Any of them would be a very good option because they all grow relatively the same way. I would recommend sunflowers. If you like nasturtiums, I recommend that you grow them. And other things that are good. The things I didn't show in this one would be a drag.

Radishes are a very popular microgreen that many people like to grow and they are very nutritious and in fact, maybe even easier than any I have shown so far. Just because the seed is large, you don't have to deal with any problems with the seed and it just germinates very quickly and grows vigorously. So I would say definitely try radish. But you can see we're going to get through it, just keep going. Almost

finish

ed here. Another thing I would say is that one of the most common questions I get is can you keep growing? And the answer is usually no.

So for thingsbesides a grass like you saw us do with wheatgrass, yes of course you can regrow wheatgrass because that's how that plant grows. Um, but for something like a pea shoot, when you cut everything off and there's nothing left, then we have our root, we have our seed, and we have the beginning of a pea. It's possible that it could grow back here, but it's highly unlikely and honestly, the soil is worn out anyway because we've absorbed quite a bit of nutrition. In fact, let me show you the floor mat. Check it out? So a lot of the nutrition in this soil has been used up at this point because they've been here for 12 to 14 days.

So in my experience, it's best to start with a new tray. What do you do with these? That's the next question people will ask. Honestly, I'll throw them in my worm bin if, if you're vermicomposting, it's really good green material for your worms. Also a little more. You could consider this soil as bedding material. This will go really well in your hot compost bin too. And I just like to recycle my soil, my microgreen soil into my compost, and then I can mix the compost back into the next tray of microgreens. Or I can just throw it into my current edible garden.

But we have a lot of pea microgreens here, so let's go into the kitchen and we'll talk about how to store them very quickly. For something like pea microgreens, what I like to do is have a mesh veggie bag. And other microgreens I would include in a bag full of, you know, maybe a Ziploc freezer bag or something. I find that pea microgreens are tough enough that they can survive in something like a mesh bag. So I will pack them up and put them in a vegetable place with relatively high humidity so that they will store for quite a long time.

But you're still going to want to use them in the next three to five days because you know it's best to use your stuff as fresh as possible from a flavor perspective, the freshest perspective, and also a nutrient density perspective. This plant is still alive, so it slowly dies as soon as you cut it. So we're just going to put these things in there. You can do it, you don't need to be picky about how densely you pack it. Sometimes I find that a little denser means it keeps a little better. But that's all. And then when you're going to use something like pea shoots, what I like to do is just put them on a cast iron griddle and throw them in the pan with a little bit of garlic.

You know you might like a little bit of soy sauce and so, you get a little bit of Asian flavor. But this is how I like to store pea microgreens. Thank you very much for watching the microgreens presentation. I really hope it inspired you to grow at least some of these microgreens and enjoy those flavors and nutrients in your foods every day. Very easy to do. If you have any question. I am Kevin. My company is called Epic Gardening, so you can find me on YouTube as Epic Gardening. There is a daily podcast called Epic Gardening podcast, Instagram, Facebook and of course the website where there are very detailed articles.

In fact, the only thing that's not called Epic Gardening is the book I just published. So if you are looking for a more detailed

guide

on urban gardening options for beginners, if you are trying to grow more of your own food in a very simple and practical way, and maybe you have some limited space or maybe not, here there is something for everyone. In fact, there's even an entire section on my in-depth process for growing microgreens. So there's quite a bit here. And you can find it on Amazon or anywhere books are sold. Again, it's called a Practical Guide to Urban Gardening.

Thank you so much for watching my Superfood Summit presentation and until next time, good luck in the garden and keep growing.