It has been a long winter, and by now, we are all craving truly fresh, homegrown greens. It will be a while before we can start planting outdoors, but in the meantime, it is easy to grow your own indoor salad garden, producing nutritious microgreen sprouts to enhance your meals as we look forward to spring.

Last March when COVID-19 hit, Dick McNamara of Hillsborough started growing microgreen sprouts to add a healthy, flavorful punch to his family’s meals while minimizing trips to the store.

“Two years ago, Vermont Public Radio had an interview with author Peter Burke about his book ‘Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening.’ It sounded interesting, so I bought a copy of the book and set it aside,” McNamara says. “Then COVID showed up, and I thought it would be perfect to have some greens growing.”

Last year, getting seed was challenging since everyone wanted to start a garden, but McNamara was able to source enough organic and untreated seeds locally and through mail order to grow a steady supply of microgreen sprouts from March into June. When the lettuces and other greens in his outdoor raised beds started to produce, he put microgreen growing aside. In late fall, after the garden was put to bed, he actually looked forward to starting up his indoor garden again.

Sprouting up

By following the detailed instructions in Burke’s book, McNamara has had great success growing his greens. “I am not much of a gardener,” he admits, “but growing these greens has been incredibly easy.”

This is a very low-tech, low-input endeavor that does not require a large investment to get up and running. To start, you need individual cups for soaking the seeks and a bag for soaking the soil. For planting, you need watertight containers; no drainage holes needed. McNamara uses aluminum loaf pans, but shallow ceramic bowls will work as well. For soil, a fluffy germination mix of peat moss, perlite and vermiculite is recommended. Compost and liquid sea kelp are needed for fertilizing. Of course, you’ll also need some seeds; peas, sunflower, broccoli, lentil or kohlrabi are good options. Lastly, newspaper or paper towels are used to cover the seeds while they sprout.

Here are the steps:

• Using a separate cup for each variety of seeds, cover the seeds with plenty of water and let them soak for a minimum of 6 hours.

• Scoop the soil mix into a gallon-size zip-close bag and add 4 cups of water. Set the bag aside and let the soil soak overnight.

• The next day, add 1 tablespoon of the compost and ½ teaspoon of the kelp in the bottom of each planting container. Then add the moistened soil, filling to within ¼ inch of the top.

• Drain the seeds and spread them evenly over the soil.

• Cover the seeds with wet newspaper or paper towels, pressing down the seeds so they make good contact with the soil.

• Put the covered containers in a warm, dark place for four days. If the paper covering starts to look dry, mist it with water.

• On the fifth day, remove the paper covers. The shoots will be about 1-inch tall. Carefully water them, and move the planting container to a sunny windowsill.

• Check for water once daily, adding only 2-4 tablespoons if needed. Brush off loose seed hulls.

• After three or four days in the sun, your greens are ready to harvest. Snip with scissors near the soil line.

• Wash the greens when you’re ready to eat them, removing any wayward soil or seed hulls.

Eats shoots and leaves

Although you can cook some microgreen sprouts like sunflower, adzuki, lentil, broccoli or pea shoots in a stir fry, the McNamaras prefer to eat theirs raw. “We have them in salads, and they are great on avocado toast,” he says. “My wife likes the pea shoots, and the radish sprouts are really good. Broccoli has a nice flavor to it, and buckwheat germinates well and has a good flavor. Popcorn was interesting. It grew well, made more sprout than leaf and was extremely sweet.”

A retired high school science teacher, McNamara also worked as a nutritional counselor before moving to New Hampshire 10 years ago. “I was always working on getting my clients to eat more greens, and the sprout is even more dense in nutrition than the full-grown plant,” he explains.

McNamara enjoys the ability to have a really fresh product. “The quality of greens is related to the time from picking to eating. Often, I cut the greens and put them right on my plate to eat. No travel time coming from the Central Valley of California and then sitting in the veggie cooler in your supermarket.”

Your microgreen sprouts can be a garnish or an addition to other salad greens, adding flavor, color, texture and crunch. They are one of the easiest edibles you can grow and are always in season. NHH

What’s the difference between sprouts, shoots, microgreens and baby greens?

They are very similar, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The main difference is the time of harvest.

• Sprouts can be grown just by keeping seeds moist—no soil needed. After germination, which only takes a few days, the whole sprout is eaten—roots and all.

• Soil-grown sprouts, often called shoots or microgreen sprouts, are grown in soil. They are eaten when the first seed leaves or cotyledons open. This takes between seven and 10 days.

• A microgreen is a seedling of an edible plant. It can be grown in soil or hydroponically. After germinating, it is allowed to grow until the first true leaves appear, then it is cut to eat. The whole process takes between 10 and 25 days.

• Baby greens are a wide variety of leafy edible plants that are harvested after the leaves have reached a larger size than the microgreens, between 3 and 6 inches. Depending on the crop, it can take between 3 and 5 weeks after germination to reach a harvestable size. If cut carefully, the plant will continue to send up more leaves.

RESOURCES

“Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening” Peter Burke • the-daily-gardener.com

Johnny’s Selected Seeds • (877) 564-6697 johnnyseeds.com