Microgreens Seeds: Fresh Leaves From Your Kitchen Counter

Microgreens are seedlings, cut young. They're older than sprouts, which you eat root and all after a couple of days in a jar, and younger than baby leaf. What you harvest is a short stem, the two cotyledon leaves, and the first pair of true leaves. That's it. No pots, no repotting, no waiting for a fruit set.

Eight Packets, One Windowsill: Which Leaf Goes In First

Speed is the main thing people sort by. Microgreens Endive is the quickest starter of the group, up in 2 to 3 days with the first pickable leaves at 8 to 15. Daikon radish gets cut after roughly a week and snaps with a hot, peppery bite. Microgreens Kale is milder and just as quick, ready 7 to 10 days after sowing at high density. Microgreens Pea Shoots tastes sweet rather than sharp and does well on a windowsill or a balcony. Microgreens Mizuna brings a mustard-like heat if you want one strong leaf instead of a blend. Microgreens Fennel goes aniseed, germinating in 7 to 14 days and getting cut about two weeks later. The slow one is Microgreens Exotic Salad Mix, harvested at 2 to 3 weeks once the first true leaves show. Rather not grow one leaf at a time? Microgreens Salad Mix puts several greens in a single tray, all year round.

Sow It Thick, Then Leave It In The Dark

Fill a shallow tray with 3 to 4 cm of damp compost or a coco mix, level it, and scatter the seed far denser than you'd ever sow a vegetable bed, near enough shoulder to shoulder. Press the seed in, don't bury it. Cover the tray for the first 2 to 4 days so the seeds sit in blackout, which pushes the stems up and keeps the surface humid. Then uncover, move it into light, and water from below or with a fine mist. Here's the watch out for: sown that dense, a tray that stays soaking wet will go fuzzy with mould and the stems collapse at the base. Damp, never swampy, and give it some air. Most varieties won't regrow after cutting either, so a tray is one harvest and then a resow.

Why Tiny Leaves Carry More Than The Grown Plant

Xiao and colleagues, writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2012, measured 25 microgreens and found many of them carried higher levels of vitamin C, vitamin K, beta-carotene, and tocopherols than their mature counterparts. Brassicas like kale, mizuna, and daikon radish also produce glucosinolates, the precursors to sulforaphane. Higher concentration doesn't mean a bigger dose though, since a handful of leaves weighs very little.

What We'd Actually Cut Tonight

Snip them straight over the plate: daikon on a fried egg, pea shoots through a noodle bowl, fennel with fish. If you're buying one packet to see whether this whole thing sticks, take the endive for speed. If you want the tray to taste of something, take the mizuna and expect a nose full of cut mustard when you lift the lid.