By Lynn Byczynski
Growing for Market

In the culinary world, microgreens are the current hot crop, supplanting mesclun mix in many upscale restaurants. Microgreens are tiny seedlings of salad greens cut at the first true leaf stage of growth. Chefs use them for garnish on a wide range of dishes and add them to salad mixes for extra pizzazz. Growers are reportedly getting very high prices for microgreens; according to one source, chefs pay $25 for a 5-by-6 inch clamshell; according to another, they are paying $75 per pound.
If those numbers make you want to jump into the microgreen business, read on. Microgreens may be extremely profitable for some growers – there are a few large growers who closely guard their production secrets – but they are not necessarily an easy crop.
“It’s hard to make money at it,” said Tucker Taylor at Woodland Gardens in Athens, Georgia. “It’s what draws chefs to our farm, but we’ll make our money selling them carrots and tomatoes and salad mix.”
Di Cody, commercial seed sales representative at Johnny’s Selected Seeds, recommends that growers start small and do some experimentation to figure out how best to grow them before getting into microgreens in a big way. She suggests starting with six basic varieties that are easy to germinate: garnet red amaranth, bull’s blood beet, red cabbage, red russian kale, purple kohlrabi, mizuna, and mustard. She also suggests spending no more than $25 a pound on seed at the start. Any plant with edible leaves can, in theory, be used in a microgreen mix; the trick is to choose varieties that germinate and grow fast, provide a good mix of flavor and color, and have as much weight as possible in the single leaf stage. Lettuce, for example, is not a good candidate for microgreens because the seedlings are so light and delicate; kohlrabi is a good choice because the seedlings are thick and weighty but still have a pleasant, mild flavor. The Chef’s Garden in Ohio, a big producer of microgreens, grows as many as 80 varieties for various mixes, according to an article in The New York Times. Lemongrass, buckwheat, basil, fennel, popcorn and many more have all been mentioned as good ingredients for microgreens mixes.
Microgreens are seeded thinly on a soilless growing medium such as peat and vermiculite. The mix should be moistened and spread an inch or two deep in a seedling tray. The deeper the soil, the less often it will need to be watered. Seeds can be either broadcast in flat trays, or seeded in lines in channel trays. Density is something you have to learn – you want to get as much production from the space as possible, yet if you seed too thickly, seedlings will stretch and the possibility of damping off increases.
Most seeds will germinate best at 70°F. A plastic dome or row cover over the flats will help germination, but should be removed immediately after the seeds germinate to prevent damping off. Seedlings can be misted, but bottom watering is preferred, again for disease control. Big operations use ebb-and-flow watering systems. In general, fertilization is not needed because the seeds contain enough nutrients to get the plants to harvestable stage. The turnaround time from seeding to harvest is 14 to 21 days with most species.
Most growers cut the greens by hand with scissors. That’s where the labor gets intensive. At Woodland Gardens on the day we called, 180 trays were ready for harvest.
“We have four people harvesting and it will take them a good part of a day to harvest, wash and pack them,” Tucker said. “The labor is really expensive.”
Eliot Coleman of Four Season Farm in Maine has solved the harvest labor problem. He sells microgreens by the flat, uncut. He has his logo imprinted on attractive wooden flats (the same ones he recommends for soil blocks in his book The New Organic Grower) and he takes the entire flat of seedlings to the restaurants, where chefs cut them as they need them. He gets $10 a flat.
For more ideas about microgreens, see the new Johnny’s commercial catalog and call for a one-page fact sheet on micro mix production: 800-854-2580.