Sally Butters grows microgreens

 

My local fruiterer sells a bagged salad called Micro/Macro - a special blend of mesclun and microgreens that’s just delicious. I regularly grow mesclun and other salad greens but had never considered growing microgreens – those nutritious baby greens that are a step up from sprouts – however, after reading Fionna Hill’s book How to Grow Microgreens it looked so easy, I decided to give it a go.

Being the middle of winter, I opted for the varieties that looked fail-safe: radish, rocket, cress, mustard streaks and snowpeas, which I ordered on-line from Kings Seeds for $32.75.
At my local garden centre I bought a couple of bonsai pots (purely for aesthetic reasons; the seed raising trays I already had at home would have done), a bag of seed-raising mix, a bag of ground pumice (again not necessary, but I wanted to try it out) and a metre of clear plastic (for creating the mini glasshouse effect).  Total cost including seeds: $70.50.

Okay, that would buy a few bags of salad – but growing your own is always more rewarding, and I used only a fraction of my seeds to grow this bumper crop. Besides, fresh is definitely best, particularly with greens.

Despite the cool weather, everything germinated in a few days and after less than three weeks pretty much everything except the snowpeas is now ready to harvest. In my vege-growing experience, I’d call that instant gratification.

The mesclun patch has been decimated – the cats have turned it into their “restroom” – so homemade micro/macro salad is currently off the menu. My first microgreens harvest will instead be used for Fionna Hill’s Raw Energy Salad (see this month’s NZH&G, page 128). And then I’ll definitely be planting more seeds – some in nice pots to give to foodie friends.