By Danielle French

The mighty Microgreen

Microgreens

We’ve been growing Microgreens here on the farm for a few years in our greenhouse in cooler weather and then outside the kitchen window on a sill. We add them to our salads and vegetable dishes or top dips, pretty well anyplace you might add herbs. I love the way they look, tiny little plants with interesting shapes. Their flavour ranges from spicy and zesty to sweet. They add a different dimension to every dish.

Sprouts are not the same

I used to confuse microgreens with sprouts that I grow in a jar but it was pointed out to me that they are not the same – sprouts do not have leaves. Microgreens are like a cousin somewhere in the middle between a sprout and a garden plant. They have little leaves and grow to be about 1 to 4 inches tall in their soil bed. They are nutritious, rich in antioxidants and minerals and they are easy to grow. The best news is, we have kits for sale on our website so you can grow your own on a window sill.

Aubrey Rose has been growing sprouts like crazy in a mason jar since she arrived home from school early this year. She’s been looking for projects and started herbs from seeds in pots on nearly every window sill, avocados in all the available drinking glasses and sprouting seeds in a glass jar in the pantry to use on lunch sandwiches with cream cheese, avocado and tomato if we can get those now precious ingredients!

Carlyle’s microgreen kits

Carlyle decided to try sprouting pea and alfalfa seeds in soil and realized that maybe others would like to try this at home too. She developed a kit that can be mailed or picked up from the farm with our SPF-TOGO menus. I’m so proud of her, it’s actually an amazing kit complete with soil, instructions, a container and two full sets of seeds to grow them in. I’m watching the greens sprout up from my desk and see every day how quickly they grow. Little baby greens. So beautiful! I’ve thrown some on pasta right at the end like a fresh herb so the heat of the noodles brings out their flavour or on salads or roasted vegetables. What’s great about them is that you don’t need to be a green thumb (but you will be after you try this) and can cut what you need leaving the rest in the pan. It’s a little bit of green in your kitchen and on your plate that keeps on growing. We love our neighbor, Jessica from Lunar Rhythm Gardens and I support her in all she does. So if you would prefer to get a back ready cut – reach out to her.

We have two other Do It Yourself kits for gardening: A Culinary Herb Kit and a Kitchen Garden Kit….gardening at home. #GrowAtHome

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