05.13.09
Gardening: Micro greens
So I’ve got a bit of the gardening bug this year. Our yard is dark and tiny, which usually puts me off. I found a lot of shade-friendly offerings this year, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. To me, a garden isn’t a garden without some veg. I used the internet to find shade-friendlier veg, to plant in the “sunny” area of the yard.
While picking out seeds at Whole Foods, I saw this package of Micro Greens.
They are quite trendy right now, and it seemed a fun and not bitter way to add variety to salads. I dislike arugula/rocket, endive, and the other bitter lettuces. Plus they’re super easy, just scatter the seeds, let grow for 25 days, and done! This one is 20% red cabbage, 20% pak choy cabbage, 20% beets, 20% swiss chard, and 20% kohlrabi.
I used one of the window-style planter boxes upstairs for the first batch. Even though I put 1″ fencing over the top, the squirrels happily devoured anything that popped above it. The soil is fairly close to the top of the planter. So I lost perhaps half the greens that way.
I’ve fixed it for the other planters, which are downstairs. They are much deeper, so I can have the soil level about 3″ below the lip to keep the greens for ourselves. I’m spacing my plantings, so I have one batch almost half done, one I will plant tomorrow or Friday, and the one I harvested today.
Not much, but enough to top two salads, garnish two plates, or eat as a snack. I mixed in some cress seed to the next batch for a little more zing.
Since I’m still trying them out, I’m going to wait until I’ve eaten a few batches before deciding to get another packet of seeds. I should get two or three more plantings out of this one.