In this article I’m going to cover the top 6 microgreen mistakes you must avoid growing big beautiful luscious microgreens. Now microgreens are full of nutrition, you can easily grow microgreens indoors or even on your kitchen counter you’ll grow very nutritious food. You can add microgreens to your salad or you can add them to your sandwich even on pasta. So they make a really good addition to your food.
Now growing micro greens is relatively very easy. You just have to be very careful about these five mistakes to avoid to grow microgreens. So let’s get started.
6 Mistakes to Avoid when Growing Microgreens
1. The growing medium
Now if you just use potting soil or just your garden soil, you’re going to have trouble growing microgreens because they contain a lot of pathogens, microbes, and a lot of stuff that can grow fungus, that can harness fungus.
So you can have a lot of pest problems indoors with this kind of soil, and also because you’re going to be eating microgreens raw just by you know cutting them with scissors and they’re going to be in contact with soil, so in order to grow microgreens you need a sterile kind of a growing medium
Now in my gardening, I always emphasize living soil. Because I’m always adding organic matter to the soil, I’m adding compost, worm casting all of this stuff to the soil to make the soil living for microbes to grow and then feed all this nutrition to the plants.
Now in the case of microgreens is not necessarily true because microgreens just derive all of their energy from the seed so they don’t need any fertilizer, they don’t need any microorganism, they don’t need anything. All they need is some sort of moisture and light and that’s about it.
So growing micro greens does not require compost or fertilizers all I do is just use coconut coir.
Just make sure the coconut coir you use does not contain any salt because you know a lot of coconuts grow around the seashore, so they are often dipped into saltwater so they can absorb salt if they’re processed that way, but if they’re processed in freshwater they should not contain any salt at all. So just make sure that is the case that they do not contain any salt.
I use mushroom containers to grow my microgreens because you can grow microgreens in 10 by 20 containers.
However sometimes we don’t get to eat all of that so I just use these mushroom containers to grow my microgreens because they’re small, they’re manageable, they’re modular and they give you like a good amount of one serving for two people, so they’re the perfect size for us to grow microgreens.
2. Mistakes to avoid when planting microgreens
Okay now that I have my containers ready and they’re filled with coconut coir it’s time to plant, but before planting I’m going to press on the coconut coir just to compress it a little bit, so it makes a really nice bed for the seeds to sit on.
Now I’m growing some radish microgreens and some pea shoot microgreens. You can also grow sunflower microgreens, crest microgreens, broccoli microgreens there are so many different kinds of microgreens you can grow.
Basically, the seeds that I have used are not any different than the actual plants this is actually radish seeds. So you can use actual radish seeds actual broccoli seeds to grow your microgreens.
Microgreens are basically plants that are actually cut to consume at a very smaller age and they contain a lot more nutrition because they drive all their energy from the seed.
So that’s why microgreens are considered very nutritious and that’s why they actually cost a little bit more than any other salad because you use quite a bit of seed to grow microgreens.
So let’s plant these seeds. Okay so let’s start with pea shoot microgreens. I’m just going to cover the entire surface with a layer of pea shoot microgreens, just a little bit densely packed, and then I’m also going to use radish microgreens.
Now radish microgreen seeds are much smaller as compared to pea shoot microgreen seeds. So make sure they’re evenly spaced and they have some space in between them otherwise they’ll be too densely packed with each other.
3. Under watering or over watering microgreen seeds
Now if you have trouble over watering create some holes in the bottom of your containers and let the excess water drain out. Always use a catchment tray at the bottom so you don’t have water running around your counter.
Now I don’t use catchment trays and I don’t create holes because I use coconut coir which absorbs all the excess moisture and coconut coir is really great at actually retaining moisture and providing consistent moisture to the seeds.
So the coconut water does not let fungus grow and it does not let the seeds dry out either.
Now you can also over water coconut coir as well, you should not be standing water in your coconut coir. Coconut coir just should be moist enough so that if you actually squeeze coconut coir there should be a few droplets of water coming out that’s all the water you need to provide in order to grow microgreens.
Now the way I water my microgreen seed is that I initially water them when I first plant them then I water every other day and I just make sure that the soil or the coconut coir the growing medium is consistently moist all the time.
Now if you have trouble germinating your microgreen seeds and all of your seeds are not germinating evenly try soaking your seeds in water for 12 to 24 hours. This will actually help the seed absorb all the moisture and helping germination as well.
4. Not covering the microgreen seeds and not providing enough weight on top of the microgreen seeds
You’re supposed to cover the microgreens and also add weight on top of the microgreens. So I’m using the clay parts to actually provide weight on top of these microgreens.
Covering the seeds and actually providing the weight on top keeps the seeds in dark which actually helps the roots to grow deeper, which in turn helps the plants to grow strong and straight.
5. Not providing enough light when growing microgreens
Not providing enough light to grow microgreens makes the ceilings very laggy or they might not grow at all. So if your window gets enough sunlight you can put your microgreens right by the window or on a windowsill and if you’re getting about five to six hours of sunlight during the day that should be enough to grow microgreens.
Now if you don’t use a grow light. Now the grow light that I use is mars hydro. This is a 300 watt grow light that I use. It provides enough light for all of these ceilings to grow big and strong and they grow really straight because it has enough light to soak in all that energy.
This mars hydro light has been working really well for me, it is providing consistent light for all the microgreens to grow really healthy.
As I mentioned earlier microgreens do not need any fertilizer, they only need three things to grow they need the seed which actually provides all the nutrients to the plant, they need the light which is where they drive energy and create photosynthesis as well and they need water to grow.
So those are the only three things that they need. Coconut coir just serves as a growing media to provide consistent moisture to the seedlings.
6. Not providing enough aeration when growing microgreens
Now your microgreen seeds need constant airflow to actually grow really healthy. If there’s not enough airflow fungus and mold will start growing in your microgreens.
Now the best way to provide aeration for your microgreens is with a fan or a draft. Now if you don’t have a fan or a draft nearby where you’re growing microgreens what you’re going to use is the USB fan.
It actually hooks up into your computer USB or you can use an outlet with the USB port on it and plug it into the wall and this will provide enough airflow for the microgreens to stay healthy and deter fungus and mold.
I really hope you enjoyed all of this information. I hope you can use all this information to avoid these five microgreen green mistakes and I hope you grow lots of microgreens and eat healthily and I’ll see you in another article. Happy Gardening!
