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.
Update on mould
Last week, we talked about how we got a mould issue in our grow room and how it was impacting many trays. We are happy to say that the problem is fixed! No more trays lost to mould! We will still be extra careful from now on, but at least we don’t need to worry anymore for now about it.
Updates on La Ruche Qui Dit Oui
From next week, we will reduce the number of distributions to La Ruche to gain more time. We were delivering our tiny plants on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The number of distributions was having an impact on our work-family life balance and we decided it was best for us to reduce the number of days dedicated to this task. Now, we will distribute only on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday at La Ruche. We will use the extra two days to work on other aspects of our business.
Check our sales point page to know more about where we distribute our microgreens.
Fewer types per cycle
For us, a cycle means a moment in which we sow a number of microgreens so that they are ready to harvest on the same day. For example, today, we could start a cycle by sowing three different types of microgreens, that we would then harvest in a few days. These sowing cycles help us stay organized and not lose our minds in the process.
From next week, we will reduce the number of crops we will grow on each cycle so we also gain a bit more time to do other tasks. One thing we didn’t realize when we started this business was how time-consuming growing microgreens commercially would be. We now need to pick very carefully how many types of microgreens we want to grow per week so we are not neglecting other areas of our business and our personal life.
Our cycles will contain only four types from now on: Broccoli Calabrese, Frilly Peas, Radish China Rose and Red Mizuna. We will also add a new type to the cycles of Saturday to give more variety to our subscription.
Glass jars instead of paper bags to distribute microgreens
Up to now, we were using paper bags to deliver our microgreens at La Ruche Qui Dit Oui. It was easy and cost-effective, but it wasn’t good for the shelf-life of our microgreens, which would wilt soon after if not placed in a different container. It was a bit demanding to our customers and we weren’t providing them with the best quality product they should be getting.
To increase shelf-life and provide a better quality product, we decided to switch from paper bags to glass jars when distributing our microgreens. They stay in a sealed environment that considerably reduces wilting, and now our microgreens can easily stay in the glass jar for about ten days.
No weight germination
Since the beginning of our microgreens journey, we have heard that using weight on top of the seeds during the germination phase was the right thing to do. We’ve been using bricks or other trays to achieve this, but we recently wanted to challenge using weight.
We decided to remove the added weight during germination for Broccoli Calabrese, Red Cabbage, Purple Kohlrabi, Red Mizuna and Rocket, and the results were very positive. Everything grew according to our standards and we didn’t notice any significant difference. What we do notice now is that we have less work to do as we don’t need to use weight anymore.
The only explanation I have is that the weight served as a way to keep the top tray as close as possible to the seeds so that the humidity would stay trapped and the seeds wouldn’t dry. In our case, since we are using a very fine and shallow medium to hold our seeds, the humidity stays inside without trouble.
We haven’t tested yet not adding weight for Radish or Peas, but we will give it a try soon.
No blackout for Radish or Broccoli
Since we switched to reusable meshes, we noticed that both Radish and Broccoli take longer to open their leaves. I don’t have a clear explanation for this, but I have noticed that the longer these tiny plants are exposed to light, the more they open up and grow. We have decided then to remove the blackout phase for both Radish and Broccoli to allow the seedlings to absorb more light. If our experiment works, we will see that the leaves open up sooner than when we use blackout.
Of course, removing blackout also means that the stems will not stretch as much as they used to, but we are ok with slightly shorter microgreens that are fully open, rather than long microgreens with small leaves. In the end, it is all a matter of personal taste.
Thank you for your time, and until next week!
