Microgreens

On a dull January afternoon, when the garden has nothing to say for itself, a seed tray on the kitchen windowsill earns its keep. Scatter radish seed over damp compost on a Saturday and, a week or two later, you can be snipping a dense little forest of seedlings into a sandwich. Real food, grown from seed, in about the time it takes a bag of supermarket salad to go slimy in the fridge.

This is a practical guide to growing microgreens, shoots and sprouts indoors on a windowsill, a shelf or a worktop. It explains how the three differ, why they are grown differently, and why sprouts in particular carry their own food-safety advice. You’ll find full step-by-step methods, seed rates, soaking and covering times, harvest windows and yields, along with a frank account of what goes wrong and why.

What’s in the book

• Microgreens, shoots, sprouts and baby leaves explained, and where the lines are drawn
• How to choose crops for your conditions, and which seedlings must never be eaten
• Buying untreated seed that is safe to eat, and storing it well
• Trays, compost, growing mats, windowsill light and grow lights, set up safely
• A detailed method for sowing a tray, with the main alternatives, plus harvesting, storing and keeping the supply going
• Crop-by-crop profiles of brassicas, beet, herbs, onions, pea shoots, sunflowers, buckwheat and more
• Telling harmless root hairs from mould, and dealing with damping off and fungus gnats
• Sprouting at home as hygienically as possible, with what food agencies around the world advise
• What the nutrition evidence really shows, without the hype
• A beginner’s first month, a microgreen year, quick-reference tables and a glossary

Who will get the most from it

Complete beginners can follow the first-month plan from the first tray of radish to a steady rhythm of sowing and cutting. More experienced growers will appreciate the detail: seed rates for a standard 1020 tray, soaking times by crop, and honest coverage of the points on which growers disagree, such as how much seed to sow and whether to start trays in the dark. There is even a short guide to the rules if you’d like to sell what you grow.

Microgreens are grown indoors, so the calendar matters less than usual, but where timing counts the book starts from the UK and similar temperate climates and explains how to shift advice by about six months in the Southern Hemisphere, where the brightest windows face north. Measurements are metric first, with imperial in brackets.

Straight talking on safety and nutrition

Laboratory measurements show that many microgreens hold higher concentrations of some vitamins and minerals, weight for weight, than the same vegetables grown to maturity. The book explains what was measured and what the numbers do and don’t mean, and it makes no claim that microgreens or sprouts cure or prevent anything. On sprouts, it recommends cooking all home-grown sprouts until piping hot, and it covers children, pets and electrical safety where they matter.

Once you have grown one tray, you will probably want to sow the next.