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INDOOR KITCHEN GARDENING
F
ast, fun to grow and packed with fl avor and nutrition, tender young microgreens can go from seed to table in as little as a week. Close cousins to edible sprouts, microgreens are grown in potting soil or seed-starting mixes instead of plain water. They customarily grow beyond the sprout stage until they have produced a true leaf or two. After that, harvesting is a simple matter of snipping off fresh greens. “You don’t need a green thumb
to grow microgreens, only patience and persistence,” says Mark Mathew Braunstein, in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, author of Microgreen Garden. Even fi rst-timers can expect good results. For example, the thin shoots grown from popcorn taste like a more
nutrition, put red cabbage and cilantro on the planting list. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Quality Laboratory, in Beltsville, Maryland, tested the nutritional properties of 25 microgreens; red cabbage, cilantro, garnet amaranth and green daikon radish had the highest concentrations of vitamin C, carotenoids, and vitamins K and E, respectively. Microgreens generally provide three times as much nutrition per weight as the same food eaten in its mature state. “People underestimate the intense
Easy-Grow Microgreens Are Big on Nutrition by Barbara Pleasant
vibrant form of sweet corn, and pea shoots work well in wraps, salads and virtually any Asian dish. Like high-fi ber wheatgrass, “Microgreens are great for juicing, either by themselves or mixed with other veggies,” says Rita Galchus (aka Sprout Lady Rita), proprietor of The Sprout House, in Lake Katrine, New York, which sells organic seeds for microgreens and sprouts. “You can add a handful of microgreens to a smoothie to ramp up the nutrition without changing its taste or texture,” she notes.
Good Picks The seeds of dozens of plants from alfalfa to wheat can be grown as microgreens. If seeking to maximize
fl avor of microgreens and might try planting mustard greens or radish varieties even if they don’t like spicy fl avors,” say Elizabeth Millard, an organic farmer in Northfi eld, Minnesota, and author of Indoor Kitchen Gardening. For beginners, large seeds that sprout quickly such as sunfl owers, buckwheat and snow peas are good choices because they produce big, robust sprouts with mild fl avor. Many people also grow microgreens for their pets. “Cats tend to prefer mild, sweet-tasting microgreens such as red clover, alfalfa and fl ax seed,” advises Galchus. “They also love grasses grown from hard wheat, whole barley and rye. Cats cannot digest the grass, but use it to bring up indigestible matter that might be lodged in their stomachs.”
Clean Greens Microgreens grow so fast that there’s little time for them to run into trouble. Commercial growers use large trays, but home gardeners can also use pretty coffee mugs or tofu boxes rescued from the recycling bin. Drainage holes in the container bottoms work well when growing beets or other slow-sprouting seeds, but are less important for fast- growing sunfl owers or wheat.
ROLFING®
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