Hey there I'm Christy Wilhelmi from Gardenerd. As we crawl towards winter solstice you
may be wanting something green in your life if you don't have a garden planted outside. Micro
greens are the answer to that. Microgreens usually come in a bigger bag than most seed packets and
the reason is because we're going to be sewing them more thickly in soil. The reason why I like
microgreens better than sprouts is because sprouts need a lot of tending too. They are
grown without soil usually in a jar or a flat, you know, sieve kind of container. And you have to rinse
them several times a day and there's the higher possibility of getting E coli, salmonella, and a
couple of other things. But in soil if you've, you know, using a fresh potting mix, that risk goes way
down. Plus you're growing in soil you're just watering the soil on a daily basis until they
germinate and then boom you've got micro greens. Life is good. So I really like growing in soil.
It's something you can do pretty easily and it doesn't take up a whole lot of space. You can
use something smaller than a seed flat like I have here. You can use little containers that your fruit,
berries come in, you know, those have natural drainage. You can fill those with with a couple
inches of soil and you're on your way. But for a bigger production in a small space these seed
flats are really great for that. What I've done is I've put a layer of newspaper on the bottom
so that I can move this really easily. It's usually pretty easy to come by these seed
flats from nurseries, if you're buying, if you have bought anything over the spring and summer growing
season you may have one of these lying around. Optimally not so much this seed flat but the
ones that look like this are going to work better for this exercise. Either way you may want to line
the bottom with either some newspaper I like to use old seed catalogs because they're on newsprint.
and fill it with soil. One or two inches is all you need and then you're ready to go. If you're looking
for a continuous supply of micro greens all season long you may want to sew in strips, you know, divide
this maybe into three or four strips and sew one week one, week two, week three, week four. And then
when these finish up you can reseed these almost immediately and keep it going in succession. Ah a
word about micro greens. Once you harvest them they do not grow back. All right I'm going to see this
flat as thickly as possible because I want to have a lot of microgreens growing in one space.
And you may need to shake up the bag because some of the seeds are heavier than others
so they sink to the bottom. And the idea is to cover every square inch
with a good amount of seeds. Some of the seed packets will say sprinkle a half inch to
a quarter inch to a half inch apart. I want more than that so I'm going to seed thickly.
And when you're done seeding you just want to cover it with soil just barely.
You don't want to cover it more than an eighth to a quarter inch of soil.
Now all that's left to do is water and wait water every day and wait for them to sprout.
And through the magic of television we've jumped ahead in time three weeks and these are ready to
harvest. You'll notice that there are some little babies that are still very young. I'm gonna cut
above those, so that those will still keep growing. And then I can seed this space for a whole nother
set of greens that will start kind of growing a little bit behind these little babies that
are here. I'm going to use... I got these pruning shears from Dramm. They sent them to me and they
have a purple handle which I love. So I'm going to use these and basically I'm just going to grab a
handful and snip right across the top. And you can use kitchen shears or garden pruners. Whatever you
like, and drop them into a container. And I'm not going to harvest this entire thing. Just going
to take maybe a section of this to throw into a meal for this evening and these guys are fresh
and delightful and homegrown and organic and virtually free basically. So now
that I've removed this top section these little babies that remain are going to continue to grow.
For some people who don't have enough room to do something this big, I just received a trial
product that I'm really kind of excited about. It's a women-owned business called Knowing Nature
and it's a microgreens kit that fits on your windowsill. So the idea is this reusable tray
is recyclable and reusable. It's just wide enough to fit on your windowsill. It has a
bottom tray for water and then a perforated tray for holding the soil and the seeds. And
you use these little discs or you can use regular soil put them in there wet them down. And it also
comes with three different types of seeds that you can grow for microgreens. When you're ready
you know, once you've harvested, you just dump [the soil] out into the green bin or your compost bin
break up some more soil and plant them again. So I thought that was a really good idea and I love
supporting women-owned businesses like my own. And so there are a couple different options for you
to grow micro greens either in a bigger scale like this or a small windowsill scale like that, Either
way you're going to end up with some delicious micro grains that you can put in salads and meals
and just snack on. If you like this video share it with your friends. Don't forget to
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I'm going to choke on this. And consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to support all the free
stuff that we do here at Gardenerd. You'll find information on growing lots of veggies if you
have more room in Gardening for Geeks. and if you want to grow fruit, Grow Your Own Mini Fruit
Garden is the book for you. And of course check out my novel Garden variety. Happy gardening everyone.