My adventure into microgreens continues and is proving to be rather fun. The one downside of gardening is that it takes time...there's no instant fix for much of ornamental and edible growing. Not with microgreens, however. It only takes a couple of weeks to have a harvest.

If you missed the previous updates, you can see them here:
Day 1
Day 3
Day 5

I shouldn't be surprised at how easy growing microgreens is, yet still it amazes me how plants germinate and grow so quickly. And, as with most things in life, there's nothing to equal experience. There's only so many YouTube videos you can watch before you've got to get your hands dirty.

Purple leaved radish (Rioja) looking lovely.

Over this past week, I've discovered a few things...

Mould

Mould was initially an issue on the sunflower and a few of the radish husks. I put this down to the fact I forgot to spray with a 3% hydrogen peroxide at the outset. However, a couple of doses and there's now no sign of mould. In future batches, I'll spray both the seeds and coconut coir matting when setting each tray up.

Density

Getting the right density is a careful balancing act. Too many, and the pad is way too swamped with greens. Have too few and there are gaps, in-efficient yields and when spraying with water the mini microgreen forest doesn't stay uptight. It's clear to see from the following photos that I haven't got this right. In the first picture you can see the dark leaved radish is too heavily planted. I did almost half the seeds and get a new tray going, and you can see the seeds I removed in the second photo. Here, the density is too few and not evenly distributed.

Here the radish is too densely packed.

And here it's too light. I'll get it right eventually!

So, going forward I need to find a nice mid-point on the seed density and try to spread more evenly across the matting.

Non-uniform Germination

What is also quite clear is that the seeds haven't all germinated and grown at the same rate so, again, the pads look patchy. I put this down to not applying any pressure when I stacked the trays. After I'd sown the seeds, I simply covered the trays in cardboard to block out the light and get germination going. HOWEVER, in some videos I've watched, the trays are stacked and weighted down a little. I think this helps to ensure all the seeds are at the same stage when it comes to uncovering. I'm going to try this with my next batch.

Sunflowers haven't germinated uniformly. Next time I'll try adding weight on top of the seeds.

Now, with the speed of growth it won't be long before I can harvest these! Amazing. And then I need to start thinking about how to sell and market...but that's for another story.

THANKS FOR READING - PLEASE CONSIDER UPVOTING, RESTEEMING AND REPLYING BELOW

You can find me on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Patreon