When fresh harvesting of vegetables is hindered by winter, gardeners can find an easy solution with microgreens, which technically are any edible plant that only grow to a couple inches high.
It is cold outside, so you are likely mostly inside these days, which is more reason to Just Keep Growing. With deciduous trees’ leaves down and the light much lower in the sky, I know I benefit from reminders of the joy of growing, renewing me as much as the seeds or plants I cultivate.
Counter to table dining
While I still have some chard I can harvest, and with the luck of the weather, some parsley, the amount of fresh harvesting I am doing is drastically reduced, yet I still want the fresh-cut nutrition my summer garden gives me. Enter microgreens.
When my husband saw the tray on the kitchen table, he said “Oh, sprouts!” but these are so much easier — and less E.Coli prone — than sprouts. What are microgreens? Technically, any edible plant you grow only to a couple of inches high. Some research indicates microgreens concentrate lots of nutrition into tiny packages.
The method couldn’t be simpler. Fill a shallow container, say 1 or 2 inches deep, with seed-starting mix, and sow your seeds thickly, like dusting a cake with sugar. The container does not need drainage, so you can use a take-out bowl or yogurt container if you like. Follow the directions on the packet as to whether the seeds need to be covered with more dirt to a particular depth. You’ll have the best results if you can cover it with a clear plastic lid to retain humidity inside.
Magnolia Garden Center was selling kits (trays with roofs) recently, and you can also find them online.
In under two weeks, you can have a tray full of microgreens to snip for super-charging stir-fries, salads or smoothies. You can grow the obvious greens, like lettuces, kale and chards, but also broccoli, cucumber or even melons. Each crop offers a hint of its ultimate flavor, so you can add some cucumber or melon flavor to your life without paying the price for imported greenhouse produce.
Because you will be harvesting these so young, they don’t need extra nutrition beyond what the seeds brought with them into the world. Likewise, with no need to ripen fruit, you don’t need to worry much about heat or light to get them to sprout (unless your packet directions call for a heat mat).
One week before this writing, I planted up a 12x12 tray kit in three sections: unnamed sunflowers, “Early Wonder” beets — both from Botanical Interest — and a microgreens blend from Territorial Seed including radish, salad burnett, kale and mustard greens. The blend came up first and is over an inch tall. The beets, with impossibly neon magenta stems, are about ¼ inch high, and the sunflowers’ bent heads, with thicker green stalks, are just visible at the surface. Usually microgreens are a single-harvest thing, but if you are careful not to cut too low, you may get a second growth. For consistent smoothie supply, you’ll want to do successive sowings every few weeks.
True sprouts, while also nutritious and fast-growing, require attendance daily or every other day to refresh the water in which they are sprouting. Because I’m not looking for a daily plant project right now, I have yet to try this, but I did read about an author who is subsisting entirely on sprouts living in the desert.
More complicated food
Having calculated last year that it takes about three months for plants grown in my Aerogarden hydroponic grow light set, I should have planted this up at least a month ago because we are out of cherry tomatoes, unless you count the green ones waiting to ripen in trays sharing table space with the microgreens.
I purchased an adapter kit for the Aerogarden to be able to plant more varieties than the company offers. Yes, I tracked down rare micro-dwarf tomato seed purveyors in France and Croatia, like you do. I’m all ready for planting, but perhaps after Thanksgiving.
Something pretty for the table
Amaryllis — the ostrich-egg sized bulbs you can force indoors from fall through winter — are entrancing, obviously. It’s so fun to watch as the egg emits giant stalks that can reach 2 feet. And when they bloom, you can get lost in those tropical trumpets. There’s a catch, however. Coaxing a repeat performance next year requires some horticultural hopscotch. You need to plant in soil mix, baby the leaves with sun and water after the flowers fade, then let them have some great light in the summer, and then total darkness for several weeks.
I did have a closet full of hibernating amaryllis one winter in a Bronx apartment, but results were not fruitful, I’m guessing they didn’t get enough light before the darkness. I am about to plant up a mammoth amaryllis “Apple Blossom” in a fancy terracotta pot. It may even get some moss and a twisty branch or two. They take about four to six weeks to bloom after planting, so maybe it can decorate our table on Christmas or New Year’s Day.
You can also choose to grow and love them for a season, like paperwhite narcissus. In this case you can just plant them in gravel or suspend them in water. Paperwhites are a tender type of Narcissus can’t live outside in our winters but can offer a beautiful ballet as they grow and blossom, with a powerfully sweet fragrance. For some it’s a little too powerful. A friend used to overwinter them in her garage, but you’d have to fertilize and grow them until then like the amaryllis, too.
These are just a few ways to extend the growing experience indoors during the winter. What are your favorites?