Radish, mustard greens, arugula, and lettuce ... these are just a few of the leaves I grow for salads year after year. Then there are the more "outside of the box" plants that I cultivate for my daily salad. Today I will name three of my all-time-favorites in the microgreens garden. One is beautiful, one aromatic, and the other super simple to grow. Let's talk microgreens!
The philosophy behind growing microgreens is to create an environment for lots of baby leaves to grow quickly. Few plants germinate faster than radish which makes this a great one for temporary gardens and for beginners too. Radish greens, just like the full-grown root, are a bit spicy and to be used in small quantities. Totally delish though!
Now for a very unique and none-to-cheap microgreen. I love baby basil leaves and due to the poor soil conditions in the garden basil never grows very large anyway. So, what I usually do is sow a LOT of basil seeds so that instead of a few big plants I have many baby plants that I can trim leaves off of all summer long.
It can be hard to find large quantities of basil seeds and one day I hope to produce enough seeds to supply my microgreen production.
Now this one is far from traditional to the microgreen garden. In fact it is neither a green nor micro as I harvest the petals from full grown sunflowers.
I wanted to include sunflower petals anyway because they are a fun addition to a summer salad. If you carefully pull the petals off of the flower the inner part of the flower stays intact which is actually full of tiny flowers which is what the bees are after and will turn into sunflower seeds once they are pollinated.
