Welcome to the weekly oh nènè microgreens update, where we talk about the latest information on our microgreens journey. We started experimenting with microgreens in March 2021 and found the process fascinating. As we discover the wonderful world of microgreens, we feel inclined to share with you our progress.
Readjusting our growing plan
Since we switched to reusable meshes instead of coconut coir as a medium to grow our microgreens, we have had to experiment quite a lot to get the proper growth for each type of microgreen. This week we noticed some interesting things that made us adjust our conditions to reach better results. Let’s check one by one and see how we adapted our process.
Mizuna and falling stems
Mizuna microgreens are the most delicate microgreens we have grown so far. The stems are quite fragile and thin, so they tend to fall even if their neighbours support them when they grow very tall. Our growing cycle included two days of blackout to help the stems grow a bit taller, which worked very well, but by doing so, we ended up having a bunch of microgreens falling over, which made our harvest a bit complicated.
Since the whole purpose of blackout is to make the stems a bit longer, we decreased the blackout on Mizuna to only one day instead of two days. We allow the microgreens to stretch a bit higher, but not too much so that they fall over. The technique works well, and we can see a difference when harvesting. However, we also see a decrease in the yield of grams we get in the end.
Rocket is giving us problems once again
Without a doubt, rocket microgreens are one of the toughest ones to grow for us. We hit another wall once we believed we cracked the formula to make the perfect rocket microgreens. Unfortunately, our rocket started giving us problems once again.
Rocket is a mucilaginous seed, which means that once it comes into contact with water, the seed produces a gel layer around itself that holds water and helps the seed germinate. The mucilaginous effect from the seed is causing a problem. We started seeing how some of the gel was getting stuck to the neighbouring leaves, which blocked the leaves from ever opening, or even worse, creating a cluster of microgreens attached and not developing correctly. The problems were evident, although the solution wasn’t.
To combat the problem, we decreased the density of seeds we use when sowing, which should give every microgreen a better chance to grow undisturbed in its own space. We also reduced the number of days for germination and blackout, which should help the gel dry out faster as we expose the microgreens to air and light more quickly. We will see if our theory is correct in a couple of weeks.
Pea microgreens do not need blackout
One of the things we have done to help our routines is to sow everything the same day so we can harvest on the same day. This approach has advantages and disadvantages. For example, it is easier for us to carry out repeated tasks, but finding the correct number of days per seed type is more complicated so that everything grows best. What may work for Broccoli may not work for Mizuna, for example.
We wanted to test using a day of blackout with peas to see if it would make a positive difference, but unfortunately, it didn’t. Having a day of blackout made the stems push higher, which is excellent, but then the base of our microgreens during harvest was hard and contained no leaves, which usually is the case with a pea microgreen. So, from now on, we won’t do any blackout with pea microgreens, and after five days of germination, the microgreens will go straight into the light and keep growing from there.
Our microgreens growth guide is public
We have decided to make public our microgreens growth guide to everyone.
When we started growing microgreens, we were overwhelmed by the amount of information that was out there. We were also disappointed that people wouldn’t share their growing conditions with other growers. We can understand the business secrecy and all that, but it just made everything so complicated for us not to be able to find at least some guidance around.
We want to challenge that and give other growers the chance to succeed with their microgreens journey, so we have created a page to share what we do for each type of microgreen. We wrote all the ratios you need to know to understand what you can expect. From sowing to harvest, how many grams you need per type, how many days doing germination, blackout, and when to harvest, including the yield in grams.
We will update the growing guide frequently with new values as we get data from our farm. We adjust these numbers every week for quality control purposes, and we are happy to share them with you.
Check out our microgreens growing guide here.
Broccoli microgreen leaves not opening, follow up
We recently shared how Radish China Rose and Broccoli Calabrese were having difficulty opening their leaves. To help the microgreens, we decided to spray water from the top so the roots would get more moisture and could grow better. This technique seemed to work, except that we started seeing that our Broccoli microgreens were falling over due to the pressure of the water, other than adding too much moisture to our microgreens when harvesting.
We have decided to stop using the top spraying water technique, and now we give the microgreens more time to develop in peace. We noticed that for Broccoli if we wait three more days, they all open up beautifully, and we do not need to do anything else. Patience was all we needed in the first place.
Sunflower seeds and high temperatures
We ran a couple of experiments to see if we could get a decent germination rate on our sunflower seeds. Unfortunately, we miserably failed, even when we increased the temperature of our grow room. We do not know what else to do at this stage to make our sunflower seeds germinate well. We will keep researching it and see if we can crack the code here. Not growing sunflower microgreens is terrible news for us because they are one of the favourites for us and our clients, but we cannot manage to make it work for now.
Thank you for your time, and until next week!
