10 most popular microgreens to grow at home

Well, it depends. You want microgreens to spice up your dishes? Go with mustard and radishes. You need some microgreens to bring some color to your dish? Amaranth, beets and chard might be your choice. Go with mint, basil, rosemary, sage.

The Hydroponics Guy goes through a basic explanation on how to grow Kale, Broccoli and Radishes microgreens using plastic domes common for seed starting, jute Microgreens Grow Mats. His way of doing things is a bit different – he doesn’t put weights on top of the seeds and he doesn’t harvest the microgreens all at once but only picks the microgreens he needs and leave the rest to keep growing for a couple of days. For storage he uses plastic zip bags and a paper towel to keep the moisture out.

So let’s see specific instructions on how to grow the most popular microgreens at home. It’s easy, you basically need common seeds, plastic trays, a growing medium (that goes as easy as paper towels) and water.

• Sunflower microgreens seem to be the most popular microgreens because they are rich in protein and vitamin B. Mandy from On The Grow makes a step-by-step guide for growing Black Oil Sunflower Microgreens. She starts by measuring the quantity of seeds and soak them in a plastic bucket for 8 hours. She also does some extra steps which are not mandatory like bringing the PH of the water down to improve the germination rates and talks about sanitizing the seeds which again might not be necessary for home growing.
• After soaking the seeds for 8 hours Mandy prepares the trays by filling them up with coco coir and then she spreads the sunglower seeds as even as possible on top. She starts the blackout period (seeds love to sprout in the dark) by placing the bottom tray on top of the seeds and also placing a weight on top to force the seedlings to grow stronger and water them once or twice a day.
• In about 4 days the seedlings are tall enough and she stops adding a weight on top of the seeds.
• Starting day 7 she moves the trays under the light and starts watering the seeds from the bottom tray.

• Radish microgreens are excellent to start your microgreens project with. They sprout very quickly, are easy to grow and bring spiciness to a dish.
• Spring Hill Farms makes a video on growing red radish microgreens using TERRAFIBRE mats 10 x 20 trays that are enough for growing around 45 grams of seeds. They also go with making a 1 to 10 hydrogen peroxide sanitizing solution and water the seeds every day. They also place a weight on top of the seeds for about 5 days and after that they place the bottom tray upside down on top of the seeds tray to continue the blackout period.
• After a couple of days the plants grow bigger than the upside down tray and therefore it’s time to place them under the light.
• On the last days, Spring Hill Farms use a hydroponic growing solution to boost up the plants growth (but that might not be necessary for home growing).

• Beets migrogreens are popular because they bring sweetness and color to any food. They take 3-4 days to germinate and can be harvested in 12-13 days. Microgreen beet seeds have a mild, spinach-like flavor and intensely purple stems with bright green leaves. Princeton Microgreens grows Detroit dark red beets. They do the usual – weight in 45g of seeds and spread them on a coco coir mix and water them, but also do a couple of things differently: they put some coco coir on top of the seeds and they don’t do a blackout period. Also, they use a Ocean Sea Minerals nutrient solution to feed the seedlings because beets tend to grow slow and thick.
• The seeds need around 5 days to germinate (that is longer than for other seeds) and stay around 5 days under the light.

• Aromatic herbs microgreens are a sure choice if your’re looking for flavour. Basil microgreens for example takes around 9-10 days to grow and are an excellent addition to any tomato and cheese dish. Coriander takes a bit longer to grow at around 14 days but it’s a nice addition to curries, and soups. Hydroponic Gardening & More with Brent grows a fun mix of different types of basil hydroponically and without soil or a mix. He grows Lemon, Thai, Purple Ruffles, Red Rubin, & Cinnamon basil microgreens.
• To start he uses an anti-fungal solution and unlike the above tutorials, Brent doesn’t use any grow medium: he places a plastic screen above the tray with the holes and this screen will be the medium. This way, you don’t spend any money on soil or coco coir and it’s completely clean.
• The seeds start to germinate in about 2 days

• Pea microgreens are sweet and packed with antioxidants and are nice to watch growing as they are bigger than other seeds. Can be used in salads and meat dishes.
• PhillySpecial teaches us how to grow peas microgreens and attempts to have a second harvest as well. To grow pea microgreens you can use the following schedule: 12-24 hours soacking the seeds, germination 3 days, blackout 3 days and grow under the light for up to 7 days. Unlike the other growers, PhillySpecial ads enough water to the tray to last throughout the entire 3 day germination period (he doesn’t open the trays after placing a weight on them).

• Broccoli microgreens are easy to grow and they have a milder broccoli taste, or bitterness.
• Grow Daddy goes to grow broccoli microgreens in soil – soil can then be reused outside as a potting mix. In about 6 days the microgreens are ready to harvest if placed under the light (if new leafs are staring to grow it’s time to harvest).

• Mustard microgreens are a bit hot and therefore one of the best options for salad and sandwiches.
• Khang Starr shows us how to grow mustard microgreens using both soil and ans soiless methods. The soiless method is as easy as putting a paper towel inside a food plastic tray. The paper towel method seems to be the easiest and cheapest way as you don’t need anything special. But, using this method without holes and and a bottom tray to have a continuous source of water to the seeds it’s actually a bit complicated as you need to water the seeds more often and make sure they don’t go dry. Regardless, Khang Starr tutorial shows that you can really grow microgreens without any special preparations.

• Amaranth microgreens are wonderfully red, thin, feathery, and take around 10 days to harvest.
• Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening goes through a down to Earth demonstration on how you could grow Amaranth microgreens on you kitchen table. He uses simple plastic containers and soil. He doesn’t use any weight, but uses another tray or aluminum foil for the blackout period. We also get a growth timelapse

Truth is that there are a lot of microgreens choices. Microveggy put up a list of 87 microgreens that you can grow.

More about microgreens

• the professional microgreens setup
• grow microgreens outdoors