How to Grow Microgreens | Step by Step for Beginners | Complete Guide

I'm going to show you today how to grow like a pro step by step from seed to harvest on a scale that suits your space and your needs research has shown that the nutrient value of microG grain can reach 40 times that of the mature plant yet it can take only one/ tenth the time from seed to harvest so while we're waiting 60 to 90 days for head of broccoli out in the garden to mature we can Harvest 6 to nine crops of broccoli mcer Greens in about one square foot of space now that's some food production welcome to G preserve I'm Carter and I'm so glad you're here today I have grown hundreds of trays of micr greens over the years and I have found the perfect combination of minimal effort and pro techniques that keep my family in healthy greens year round for a tiny fraction of the cost of buying them at the store and far less time in space then you can grow them in the garden that's what I'm going to share with you today so before we get into how to grow them let me make sure you're firmly convinced that this is something you should be doing microG grains are a rich source of iron zinc magnesium potassium calcium folate phosphorus they're also packed with antioxidants and polyphenols and lutein sulphoraphane is a powerful antioxidant that has been shown to have some serious anti-cancer properties polyphenols are a group of antioxidant that have been linked to a reduced risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease diabetes and cancer mic grains are also rich in vitamin C vitamin A and vitamin K Vitamin C is an antioxidant that helps boost the immune system and promote healthy skin vitamin A is important division immune function and skin Health Vitamin K is essential for blood clotting and bone health did you know that just 2 ounces of sunflower micrograins I can hold that in my hand will provide you with 133% of your daily vitamin C needs 71% of your daily needs for iron and 44% of your daily needs for vitamin K that is a Powerhouse of a handful so while micr greens are easy to grow and yes you can do it in an old takeout container lined with a wet paper towel you can do it in an old cereal bowl in front of your kitchen window or you can even pull out your Chia Pet from the 1970s and yes those are chia microgreens growing in that Chia Pet I'm going to take you step by step through my process for growing micr greens that'll get you far better production faster and meet your need for greens for weeks to come we're going to head down to my grow to show you how I do this however it's important to know that I grew microgreens in my kitchen for years I'll put up some pictures of what I did I had about four linear feet of growing space I had two very inexpensive small LED lights from Amazon I'll link those below I'll link the current ones I use don't worry about any of that but this picture right here this is how I grew all the microgreens that we need needed for years today I use the same setup that I use for starting my garden plants and for growing lettuce year round but under a kitchen cabinet if that's what you have it's going to work absolutely fine so don't click off because you think I'm going to give you some massive Pro setup I'm giving you the home setup with the pro technique let's talk one second about whether or not you really need grow lights technically you don't need grow lights to grow microgreens however even if you have a very Full Exposure Southern window or salarium or whatever when we're talking about a lifespan of 7 to 14 days and you have two or three days of Cloudy Skies or rainy Skies you're really kind of messing with the growth process of the micr grain yes they'll still grow you'll still eventually get there but you are losing the control you have in a artificially lit environment so let's take a look at what I have know that you can definitely use what you have you don't have to buy anything for this but you do need to know the proper techniques okay let's head downstairs but I'm going to walk you through step by step what I'm doing bear with me here a bit in the beginning the light is a little bit rough as I get farther away from the grow lights but it'll perk up and you'll see those greens bright and beautiful here shortly so while you can grow in various mediums coca quar HP mats even hydroponically I choose a fine textured organic indoor potting mix and you know it's whatever brand is the best price of the time I want it moist but not dripping so what I'm doing here is not the boiling water sterilization method you've seen fakes too because I'm using indoor potting soil there's far less occurrence of fungus nut eggs in my soil however I do store garden soil in the growroom so I'll show you in a bit how I deal with any fungus SS that may come from that here I'm going to use 10x10 trays with drainage holes having those drainage holes is important so even if you are using uh a takeout container make sure you put some drainage holes in it and then you're going to need something without drainage holes to catch the water and water from the bottom so I'm using 10 x 10 trays with drainage holes and I'm adding about an inch of soil don't worry about it I'm going to put links to everything I use down below but do know that it's absolutely fine to use what you have so if what you have is a couple of takeout containers you poke holes in one of them have it sit down in the one that does not have holes in it maybe with a couple of Pebbles under there so you have a little room for the water because we're going to be bottom ordering these micro greens later on so use what you have no big deal while I get my trays and labels set up let's answer the question I get all the time are micr green seeds different than regular garden seeds no they're not except that they usually come in much larger quantities than the home Gardener is used to see but those much larger packages don't come within a equivalently larger price tag I get all my micrograin and sprout seeds at Tre Leaf Market so let's take a look at the current pricing on Broccoli seeds a regular 3 G package for the garden contains 900 seeds and cost $249 but if you're planning to grow micr greens or Sprouts you might buy a one PB package containing 144,000 seeds and it's only going to be $13.73 and that 1B package is going to grow you many many trays of broccoli microgreens let's take a look now at sunflower seeds the home Gardener might buy a 5 G packet containing 88 seeds for $249 now sunflower microgreens are my favorite so I actually buy the 5B bag containing 40,000 seeds for just $20.79 and this is easily going to last me a couple of years so speaking of that let's address the age of the seeds that you need to use for microgreens because we're seeding so heavily this is a perfect time to use up your older seeds some of the seeds I'm using today are actually 3 to 4 years old so you'll notice that with the smaller seeds I'm going to use one tablespoon of seeds for a 10x10 tray these are the these tiny little seeds here don't need to be soaked you just want to sprinkle them on and you want to sprinkle them on with very good coverage don't you know pile them up so they're a/4 of an inch thick but cover as much of that tray as you can as we move into larger seeds like peas sunflowers or swiss chard these seeds should be soaked for 4 to 12 hours to help encourage a quicker germination and I generally use about 3 tablespoons of the larger seeds for a 10x10 tray again I want to put them on for good coverage try not to pile them on top of each other but try to get some really good coverage in these so I'm going to Spritz each tray with water but you'll notice I'm not covering the seeds with soil it's not necessary and it's going to result in dirty microgreens which is not what I want instead I'm going to use a pro technique that'll give me excellent seed to soil contact Superior germination and sturdy healthy plants I'm going to use a tra of the same size so try to get as close to the same size as you can so I'm going to put this tray right on top of the seeds and soil and then I'm going to wait it down yeah I know that sounds a little nuts doesn't it but I promise you this is so important in achieving excellent seed to soil contact you're going to get far better germination faster germination and seeds with the roots that are automatically being pushed down into the dirt to be strong and sturdy so I'm going to use bricks today because that's what I have handy down here in my growroom but when I was growing in my kitchen I used boxes of broth and coconut milk as my weights you can use cans you know one number 10 can is probably heavy enough to weight this down sufficiently you can use bricks you can use paper Stones you can use whatever you have that will give you good coverage it's a it's a good size to fit in your tray so if you'll notice the picture from my kitchen in Atlanta I would put my boxes of broth or coconut milk side by side I could fit two in there and then they weren't quite as heavy as I'd like them to be so I can put a couple more on top just make sure that your seeds are covered as well as you can from side to side corner to corner in that tray so in this batch of micro greens that I'm growing lettuce is the only one that will not be treated this way because it does need light to germinate I'll just put a humidity Dome over it and wait for its normal germination so as we check on them over the next few days we'll Spritz a bit more water if needed what we're looking for is significant germination not just a couple of seeds showing a little bit of root showing a little bit of sprout coming out we want significant germination and then within a day or so from that significant germination we'll see these tiny little plants start to lift up the weighted lid so we have so many in there and they're going to be so strong they are going to live lift up that tray holding the weights at that point we can remove the weights and either maintain just the empty tray on top if they're still very short or flip the tray over to create a blackout Dome to encourage the plants to stretch searching for light now if we're growing for plant starts for the garden we don't want Ley seedlings but in the case of microgreens Ley seedlings will get you where you want to go faster they'll get you to a height that you can cut them without digging into the dirt without sacrificing any of the nutrition so Ley is just fine when it comes to microG graines so we're going to make sure that they're still covered at least for another day or two so whether you put them down to keep some weight going if they haven't quite gotten you know to at least an inch high yet or if you just turn it into a blackout Dome and let them just keep searching for the light right they're going to get very tall very fast so once they're a couple inches tall we can remove the Dome and expose them to light and they're going to Green up rapidly and continue to grow towards the light so as we go back every day and and we check on our microgreens you'll know that different seeds are really on different timelines things like arugula and mustard are always early overachievers and they could have great germination and you know be ready to go into the Dome stage by day two sunflowers and peas are going to take a few days longer basil parsley and cilantro can take 2 to 3 weeks to even germinate so just follow their lead all you're looking for is the Key signs from the micrograin to know what to do when it's not like everything has to have those weights taken off on day three some will need it taken off on day two some are going to need them taking off on day six or day seven even Beyond so watering needs are going to pick up once the plants are uncovered and we're going to change how we do it so bottom watering is where we're moving next and it's going to be super key as soon as you start to see Roots come through the drainage holes they're going to need water daily you want to give them enough water to keep the roots plump and white but not so much that there's any water left at the bottom of the tray the next day so there's some trial and error here as each tray may be slightly different but do keep in mind that you're growing hundreds to even thousands of plants in each container and they're going to drink a good bit of water we see that some marker greens are looking pretty good you know they're looking like what you're going to see in the store they've got a beautiful canopy are they ready to harvest what about the others that are still too short some of them still have seed holes hanging on how do you know when they're ready to harvest so what we're looking for is the first sign of a true Leaf the first couple little leaves at least on the brassas that come up are going to be the cuddle Edens and these are going to all look the same you can look at a tray of kale and a tray of broccoli and a kale of cauliflower and if we're just at the Calon stage you can't tell which is switch but once those leaves start to come up and they get the signature little broccoli leaf or the signature little kale Leaf that's when we want to cut them for microgreens so PR Growers will harvest the entire tray at this point and move on to the next crop however we have much more flexibility than they do now we're going to have things like peas and grasses they grow a bit differently and you're simply going to judge the Readiness of those by height so you're going to want I like you know four to five inches really on my Peas I don't grow wheat grass but that's about the height I'd go with there as well for crops that are also excellent baby greens like arugula mustard lettuce Swiss chard broccoli beets cilantro parsley kale bok choy Etc I harvest what I need when I need it and I leave the rest to grow on until I want to harvest Again by the time I get halfway through the tray I'm harvesting bowls full of leafy greens that will continue to grow on for weeks to come now while we're talking about baby greens let's address a couple of things here first there are some crops that do not make for good eating once they've matured too much sunflowers for one when my sunflowers are just starting to produce that first true Leaf I would generally Harvest a whole tray within a couple days what you're likely to find is that there are many smaller plants in the tray that were crowded out by the taller ones now these will have a chance to grow and give me a second small crop in the next few days peas are one that will start to get too Woody if left to grow for too long however if you cut the peas shoots above the bottom leaf or two they can often regrow another one to two rounds wheat grass is another one that will regrow after harvest producing three to four rounds so how to harvest usually I just prefer a sharp knife the scissors are also going to be just fine so just grab a hold of the tops of each batch as you cut keeping the cut line far enough above the dirt that your Harvest stays clean this is key for me it's what of the best things I think about growing indoors is that my Harvest is clean so I don't have dirt I don't have splashback I don't have slugs I don't have any of the icky stuff we can get un leafy greens out in the garden the next thing we need to address as we move from micro green stage to baby green stage is fer fertilizer so up to the microgreen stage fertilizer isn't really necessary if you're using potting soil although I often do it anyway but if you're using something without nutrition something inert like coca quar or HPM a bit of liquid diluted fertilizer is going to be helpful after germination however even with soil once we're growing real plants they're going to need some nutrition I use an indoor non-smelly fertilizer at about 1 teaspoon of fertilizer to one quart of water and I do this through bottom watering every single day again keeping those roots plump and white and healthy not water lugged and not dried out with food Water and Light you can continue growing food from this one planting for at least a couple of months so while I continue to run through the timeline of the microG grain for you let's talk briefly about a couple of issues that you may run into first off I mentioned before are fungus knats I find these easy to solve with these little yellow sticky things I'm going to link them down below but do note that if you're using regular outdoor garden soil to plant your microgreens in you'll need to sterilize it with boiling water to kill the fungus eggs particularly if you're growing in your kitchen you do not want fungus Nats in your kitchen so when I was in Atlanta and growing in my kitchen I used mostly coconut cor there and just fertilized from germination on very lightly but fertilized from germination on the next thing you may run across is small spots of mold bottom watering and keep you a fan nearby to circulate air all but eliminates this but it will happen sometimes and it is so easy to solve with a bit of hydrogen peroxide some water and an opaque spray bottle it is nothing to be concerned about so I use a couple tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to a cup of water and I just spray any little spot of mold that I happen to see now I did not have an example of mold in this batch the last batch and and quite frankly I very rarely have mold because of the bottom watering and the fan that I keep on for several hours a day so just spray the mold if you see it it may take a day or two but it's generally very easy to control this solution also works reasonably well on algae but for such a short growing period algae really shouldn't be a big problem for you finally there's a condition called damping off that can occur it's caused by a fungus and is pretty much irreversible however if the rest of your M greens are healthy and ready to harvest go ahead and harvest the ones that look good and dispose of the remains in the garbage and sanitize the tray before planting in it again so remember we've just used an inch of soil a tablespoon of seeds and a little bit of our time watering these things so don't stress if you really need to dump the contents of a tray because damping off has has happened it happens just move on you know in another 7 to 10 days you're going to have a full crop anyway so 95% of the time you're going to finish the entire life cycle from seed to baby green with a totally healthy tray of greens so what do you do with the root mass that's left and that's really what you're going to have it's going to be a giant root mass with very little soil left so a couple of different things you can do with it if you have chickens they will love you to death to have have this as their snack uh worms would also be a great way if you have a worm composting setup that would be terrific I generally just throw it in my garden compost and it you know returns back as great soil the next year so no need to throw it away unless it has been uh damaged by disease okay so now that you know the steps to grow some fantastic quantities of microG grain let's talk about which crops might be best for you to start with in order to get a bumper crop and fall in love with micr greens so arugula is super easy it'll pop up so fast it'll you you'll have a hard time keeping up with it it is so fast to grow mustard is also fantastic it'll be up and ready before you know it broccoli micr greens are outstanding particularly in their nutritional value kale is another excellent one lettuce is super easy takes a little bit longer than the others but it is super easy bok choy is fantastic and has a delicious flavor and Red Acre cabbage is one of the prettiest things you can grow I think so once you're ready to move into a slightly more advanced level let's talk about some that are great fits there radish I love radish my favorite is china Rose it is beautiful it is spicy it's peppery it's it's just absolutely stunning I'll put up a couple of pictures of it for you beets make excellent microgreens Swiss Chard is another total Beauty in terms of its greens and its stem peas shoots peas are easy you know just a a couple more steps with the soaking and The Cutting multiple times sunflowers sunflowers can be a little bit tricky to germinate but what's going to help so much is keeping the weight on probably longer than many of the others and soaking those seeds before you plant them parsley and cilantro are not necessarily difficult but they do take quite a while to germinate sometimes as long as 14 to 20 days basil the same thing so let me tell you my favorites arugula sunflowers snow peas Red Acre cabbage lettuce and china Rose radish I could be happy just growing those for the rest of my life but David likes some others and I do like to give them variety and there you have it somewhere between the Chia pad and the kitchen window and a warehouse filled with racks and grow lights and heating mat and fans and automatic watering and strict schedules is that just right solution for the hom grower who wants to grow tons of nutrition greens indoors year round so if you've learned something today please give me a thumbs up and consider subscribing if you want more content like this if you'd like to learn more about growing nutrition screens indoors check out one of these two videos Sprouts or lettuce give you everything you need to know to do that remember that all of the products that I use are down below but do what suit your budget do what suits your needs do what you need based on what you already have that'll be just fine so thank you so much for joining me today go grow some food this week and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Channel: Grow and Preserve

Views: 2,717

Keywords: indoor grow, sprouting trays for microgreens, microgreens farm, bootstrap farmer, how to grow microgreens indoors, microgreens growing, microgreens tutorial, how to grow microgreens from start to finish, how to grow microgreens, grow your own, microgreens at home, sprouting microgreens at home, microgreens growing tutorial, micro greens

Id: eG62MTdfQVc

Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2024