How to grow Basil Microgreens

[Music] [Applause] so [Music] hello everyone we are back for a long awaited grow of basil micro basil i've been having requests for this video for quite some time i figured i'd go ahead and do it but go ahead and hunker down because this is a long one this is definitely a few weeks so we're actually going to be growing three kinds of basils today we're going to start off with our genovese basil this is a really common basil that you find like when you go to the grocery store then we have our opal base opal basil which is a very it's very purple color it's a really beautiful purple it's very eye appealing and our customers love that and then our third one which true leaf market just sent us to try out here this is our lemon basil and it definitely tastes a lot different than these two so we're gonna go ahead and grow all three of them at the same time and uh you know just you know go with that i guess right so the first thing we're definitely gonna need here is um a couple trays i already have these um you know filled with coco coir um i'll go ahead and put a link up here with how we we use coca-cola block and and how we create that and how we mix it with water to create our coir and how to basically put into a tray it's very simple we we really use a very minimal amount on poco coir we can get a coca-cola block and i'd say anywhere between 20 to 25 trays of micro greens from one block and i can usually find it on sale sometimes for about 4.99 a block so it's so cheap um that at the same time there's no nutrients in coco coir so anything that you want to add it's you know you know basically what you're adding it's it's seed water and then whatever else you add there's there's no guessing with you know of all kinds of soils and other things that i've seen um you know people grow in uh where you really just unless you're looking at a bag full of 400 ingredients i don't like to do that with my customers right i like everything as organic as humanly possible but that's just my method everybody's different so let's go ahead and get get started with this so we're going to start off i'll start off with the lemon here and for all of our basils we do about 10 grams of seed so we'll zero out our scale obviously ah right around there that's beautiful this is a little herb jar had herbs in it and we washed it out we used that for a seed shaker i absolutely love it works perfectly the seeds are very tiny in this so you really don't need many that's why we only do about 10 grams just because they are so small all right it's looking really good okay so that's our lemon they're done go ahead and clean this bag up here out of the way um we're going to do our opal basil this is that nice beautiful purple basil that we have we'll do another 10. we got 11 but no big deal try to get it spread as evenly as possible it's the hardest part about sewing even though to me it's getting to be pretty easy it really helps to have like a little decent seat shaker i won't lie if you're doing it by hand i don't know i always found doing stuff by hand to be it was a little bit more of a pain i could never get stuff quite as even that and it took a lot longer too this saves you a lot of time genevieve's 10 here that should do almost nine ten oh of course right past ten right to eleven okay instead of doing this i'm kind of seeing seats sometimes fly off and go into the other tray so we might have a few that's mixed a little bit but no big deal so okay so now that we have everything sprinkled on we'll go ahead and get our hose okay we'll set this to mist we're just gonna spray on really nicely here you're actually gonna see almost immediately they form this jelly-like barrier around the seed almost immediately when you water these but what happens is it's very sticky so when we stack these we always talk about other videos don't mess around and don't fiddle with your greens and germination right well this is definitely one of them where you definitely don't want to fiddle because when you stack that jelly-like membrane around the seed is going to stick to the tray on top of it we gave it a really good soaking because we're going to leave this in germination for the next like five days or so and then we're going to leave it in blackout for a little bit longer well it's not cool you can already see it forming it's like this one we did first this one we did second wow you can really see it forming that nice jelly like um you know barry around the seed that's really neat looking so so like i was saying what's happening here though is is that when we stack these trays this is this is very gooey and sticky like right so it's going to stick to the tray on top of it so my point being is that once we stack these trays we do not want to touch them for five days i mean not even peak nothing because you're gonna rip you know the seeds right up and you're gonna rip the pla if it's trying to germinate in there and the roots are trying to grow you're just going to rip it right out so by day five usually what happens here is is that uh you know it's the that membrane is gone and there's enough that have germinated uh the the roots have really gone in uh they've structured they've structured themselves and so forth that day five is usually the day that we actually move this into a blackout phase um somewhere around there you know give or take a day obviously but so yeah you can actually tell that the the lemon basil is actually a little bit thicker of a seed and a little bit thicker of a membrane here it really stands out we give it the same exact amount of seed 10 grams as everything else here and the genovese and the opal you could tell a little bit smaller and the membrane just isn't quite as large um but i mean that's no big deal just interesting to see the differences and so forth so so anyways again so we're going to stack these just like so here we go once we do it we can undo it okay just like so and we're going to take another tray put it on top here and because this tray is is that green tray it is a little see-through so i always put that extra black tray on top it's always important to do that just to make sure that it stays as black as possible so we'll do that go ahead and put a weight on top 15 pounds there we go and then we're just gonna go ahead and we're going to put it in germination for about five days and now we trust the process right don't touch it don't peek at it we'll come back in five days and then we'll lift those trays up for the first time all right so stick with us stay tuned okay and welcome back to day number five of our basil grow and we have everything still stacked here with the weight on it so we're going to go ahead and take the weight off just like so okay we have up first here we have our genovese basil then we have our opal basil and then we have our lemon basil and everything seems to have germinated very well here um like i was saying before the seeds get very sticky so if you start playing with them and and lifting them up and things you know you're going to have some issues it's going to stick to the bottom of the of the tray here but as you see they lifted off very nicely since we waited for you know about five days that that stickiness coating that they get on the seeds tends to kind of fade away after several days and after they are done pretty much germinating so that's what we're looking for here again this is day five and this is this is looking really good this is ready to go um into a blackout phase for a few days what we're really looking for through blackout is um basically what we're doing is we're tricking them and to trying to grow upwards and grow tall in order to find light so what we do is we starve them of light by putting black trays on top and then again what they're going to try to do is they're going to try to grow tall so we're going to definitely leave these in black out for a couple days being math they're so they're such a short crop so we want to try to stretch them as much as possible so when we cut you know we get plenty of crop so that's exactly what we're going to do so i got three blackout trays here we're literally just gonna take them like so just put the tray right on top and put each one on a rack like that this this purple is just so pretty i can already see it it's just it's gorgeous it's a pretty crop i really love it the purple is a little bit more expensive i should say probably a lot more expensive about 100 more expensive um than like a genevieve's um but i mean it is purple and people tend to gravitate towards color right so there we go so we will leave those into a blackout state um for a few days and we'll come back in a few days and see what they look like so stay tuned okay we are back to day number seven of our basil grow um we've had this in blackout for the last two days um basically our goal blackout is to make sure that um you know we trick the plant into putting it in the dark and the plant wants to grow up towards the light so that kind of stretches out the stock a little bit right so that's the objective of blackout because basil is such a short crop blackouts are very important to make sure you get as much length as possible to get as much crop as possible and also makes it easier to cut otherwise it's just too close to the medium it's really no point of growing basil if you know if it doesn't grow tall enough to really get a crop out of it right so we're going to go ahead and take these off that is our genovese basil this is our opal basil and this is our lemon basil and these are looking terrific this is a really good length um again we've had these in blackout for two days now you really can't go much more than this with basil basil tends to stall out a little bit if you keep it in black out too long and this is this is a pretty good length this is about what i see basil grown to uh for the most part with just about any grower that i've ever seen or met um so we're going to go ahead and lift these up i can definitely tell that they're going to need water obviously we haven't given them water in a very long time i think it's been what seven days so that we haven't watered these except for day one so we're definitely going to give these water today i do have my ocean solution mix here um and this is we actually uh you can be saying all my videos but uh one half an ounce of this for every one gallon of water so i have a five gallon drum here that i keep water in so i'll put about two and a half ounces of this inside here and again our coco coir has absolutely no nutrients in it whatsoever right so we're basically just growing with water and seed and that's it and that's why i like to add just a little bit something extra but it's also extremely extremely organic this is basically just concentrated uh minerals right from the ocean you know i don't like growing with pro mixes and all kinds of stuff i i just feel like they're they're dirty i know that it's good for like a garden and things like that i just don't like growing with it from micro greens there's so much stuff in it and i just i like to grow my product as organic as humanly possible and that's why i only just use a touch of this so not calling anyone out if you use you know anything else i'm just saying it's what works for me you know obviously it's completely your choice it's your business you know or your hobby if you're a hobby grower so let me go ahead and get a measuring cup here and we're going to lift these up one at a time here and i'm going to put in they haven't had water in quite some time i'm going to say i'm going to put in about a cup of water each here it's kind of hard for you to see me do this just because there's trays all over so you're just going to have to trust me here just putting in a cup of water so there you see that one a little bit better so basil is a very very slow grow so i think what i'm going to do here is is i'm going to show you basil one day at a time for the first couple days here while it starts to fill out a little bit but then i think what we're going to do is we're going to skip to maybe like every other day just because it almost does nothing on a day-to-day basis it's going to be really hard to see a noticeable difference so this is going to be a quite a long row so again just doing every single day just watering i mean we really cannot be doing anything besides watering from this point forward so uh you know we'll go ahead and introduce these to light you know again come back in a day or so and we'll see what they're doing so we'll go ahead and do that this purple is just so beautiful so gorgeous it's pretty gross so all right we'll come back tomorrow and we'll see how they're holding up so i'll see you soon okay we are back to day number eight for our basil grow here and everything's looking pretty good the green seems to actually be opening up a little bit faster than the purple and our purple heel actually kind of has a little a little bit of green kind of mixed into it i actually find that with a lot of the purples of all different kinds of micro greens you're going to get green mixed in not sure why i'm not sure if the seed get mixed in when they're sorting it or what's going on but it looks really good the cotyledons are really starting to open up here on the greens again the purple not so much but i'm sure it'll get there next day or two like i was saying before this is a really slow grow so i'm probably going to do one more video tomorrow of what this really looks like from a day to day basis and then after that we're going to skip to kind of every other day just again because it's so long so but let's go ahead and check the water on these i can lift them up and actually kind of feel they are get a little light here so i'm going to go ahead and get some water we are using our ocean mineral water for this again this is kind of hard to see because i have these all lined up here so but i'm going to probably use i'm going to say about a cup cup and a half of water here just fill up the bottom of that reservoir there for each one just like so yeah this one over here was a little drier so i'm going to give it a little bit more perfect all right we're just going to go ahead and put them right back on the shelf again all three there we go just like that and we'll come back tomorrow and we'll see what they look like see you shortly okay welcome back to day number 10 of our basil grow so i said we were going to originally come back for day number nine um but i noticed on day number nine that there really wasn't hardly anything that changed at all uh the cotyledons really weren't quite opening up yet and so and i didn't even have to water it i lifted the trays on a shelf and they still had plenty of water so i literally just left um the basil on the shelf for day number nine we didn't do anything at all um and here we are day number 10 and i'm actually starting to see quite a bit of change on day number 10. um the catalinans are really starting to open out and grow out a little bit more uh this you know comparing kind of you know from crop to crop we sell these all the same weight i believe we did about uh 10 grams each on these i would say over here is the lemon and lemon's doing pretty good um the uh the opal right here this this beautiful purple i think is probably doing the mess the best i'm seeing it it's the most full it is a little lag behind as far as the catalinans aren't quite as big as the others but i can definitely see a difference in density this seems to be like the highest density for sure um and then our genebees basil is really kind of it's a little bit you know it's not quite as dense um they're a little uneven and grow a little bit here um again we i mean we sewed everything the exact same way here um but i would definitely say that um our purple is probably you know in the lead here as far as you know being the best grow so far out of these three but we'll see we'll see how it goes so i'm definitely gonna left these up um they're gonna need a little bit of water not too much basil really doesn't need a lot of water it really doesn't soak up that water because there's such a little change from day to day you know they don't grow really fast like some of our other microgreens grow it's a very stagnant slow boring grow so you just want to make sure you know that they have enough water don't over water them obviously but you know just keep an eye on them it's real real kind of chill chill grow for sure but we'll give it a little bit of water here just make sure they're topped off i'll start over here so i'm probably giving them three quarters of a cup not much you can't really see because it's kind of behind the tray here but i mean it's the easiest way for me to water like this uh yeah about three quarters of a cup um they're dry but they're they're still a little wet but you know there's not like a a whole bunch of water sloshing around the bottom of these trays by any means they're just very damp but that's about it so yeah perfect three quarters of cup for about each one of them perfectly fine so we'll just go ahead and put it right back in light again like so one two three obviously this is much easier um when you're kind of doing this um you know out without being on camera um you know traditionally i'll just come up over here lift the tray up a little bit see if it needs a little bit of water uh peek at the crop make sure it's doing okay if it needs water i just lift up right here give it a little bit of water and kind of move on real quick process obviously taking out here and showing you guys is it's a little bit more tedious um in a process right but i really want to um you know show you what's going on with it obviously so um so anyways we'll come back in two days tomorrow they're really not going to change like i said basil is really slow uh so we'll come back on day number 12. we'll see you then okay welcome back to day number 12 of our basil grow um and looking over these so i would say that the genovese over here seems to i'm not going to call it a total failure because this is pretty much still harvestable i probably wouldn't give this to a restaurant looking like this it's a little spotty in germination i'd have to grow it again to kind of really get a feel for maybe what might have happened with this one um it's i mean some of it's grown perfectly fine but i'd say that we're lacking a little bit of germination with this seed and that happens sometimes um so that's kind of a good experience to kind of have on film here with you guys is that not every grow is going to go absolutely perfect um as i mean you saw that we planted this the exact same way the exact same amount of density as the other two basils and the other two day basils are actually thriving quite well compared to the geneves um so i mean again sometimes that just happens so um but anyways the opal basil i think is one of the best here um it's just it's so full and so fluffy and looks looks absolutely great i would 100 give this to a restaurant looking like this and then our lemon basil so this is it there's a little like a few little gaps here and stuff like that but this will actually fill out over the next few days believe it or not if you let it continue to grow and this is looking this is a pretty good shape this is almost to the extent of of our opal basil here but again it looks great so i'm very happy with this grow as well the lemon i can actually smell a lemon from here the lemon basil actually has almost like a black licorice scent i think i've said before and um it has a little bit of that blacker licorice hint when you taste it as well and but it's not in a bad way even if you don't like black ricochet like my wife doesn't like it um she loves this i don't know how to explain it it's just a different flavor altogether i don't know why they call it lemon basil because i just don't get any lemon out of it when i taste it but you know it's what it is so um now so i'm gonna do something different here today i've actually done this in a few of my other videos before so what you can do is so you could harvest basil today it's about day 12. this has actually grown pretty fast believe it or not compared to some of the other times i've actually grown basil but today so instead of harvesting this what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to drop two of these off at a restaurant for they want to try basil they said but they want to have the basil good they're not going to use it a whole bunch they're only going to use it for like really specialty type stuff so it has to stay good for anywhere from a week or two which is why i suggested basil to begin with because it grows very slow so when we give this to a restaurant as a tray you know they're going to be able to clip this for absolutely a week or two um you know without overgrowing itself or any of those types of things again which is why i love basil for that reason because it can handle that unlike some of your other micro greens you can't do that with a broccoli for instance a broccoli just outgrow itself in a few days along with some other micro greens um so i'm actually going to take the geneves i'm actually going to use um i'm actually going to put this in a spaghetti sauce myself that i'm going to be making tonight so i'm just going to be harvesting this and just toss it in there and then maybe plating it over top a little bit a little bit of garnish as well so that's what i'm going to do with the jenna bees over here so i'm going to put that aside for me and then these two like i said i'm going to drop these off at a restaurant today now we can absolutely push these for another week or two and you can grow this as long as you want this basil that's what's so cool about basil is i've actually grown it so it's actually almost like it bubbles out the true leaf you can actually see the true leaf when it comes out kind of bubbles out almost like a bubble and it gets a really strong vibrant you know basil type of taste which is one of the reasons why we love basil so much um and so again you don't have to stop at this point i'm only stopping at this point because i'm going you know to a restaurant you don't have to keep on growing it you know experiment with basil it's actually one of the fun things to grow because there's so many different times that you could harvest this crop and have it still do like different things and different tastes and you know different platings all kinds of stuff so but yeah guys so i hope you learned something with basil today this was a little fun grow i don't usually do a variety grow too often i think i'm going to start doing it a little bit more just because there are a few other crops that out there that do have uh quite a large variety i think mustards that grow up to like six different types of mustard if not more um so anyways i hope you like this video and we'll see you next grow so bye-bye [Music] hello everyone peter here from princeton michael greens i hope you enjoyed this video if you did go ahead and hit that thumbs up button and subscribe also if you have any ideas suggestions or questions feel free to leave them below in the comment box we'll see you soon bye

Channel: Princeton Microgreens

Views: 4,042

Rating: 4.8938055 out of 5

Keywords: microgreens, how to grow microgreens, growing microgreens, microgreens business, how to grow microgreens indoors, urban farming, microgreen, how to, grow, super food, led, seeds, coco coir, micro greens, vegan, chef, health, sustainable living, organic, healthy food, indoor farming, hydroponics, plant based, nutrition, vertical farming, princeton, agriculture, gourmet, vegetables, sprouts, eat local, growing, grow your own, farmers market, basil, basil microgreens, how to grow basil

Id: vXz4HDdk980

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021