Making Your Own Micro-Greens Salad, Part 3
Thanks to Emma Holister of http://www.art-margin.com/ for several articles—one on sprouting earlier, and now this 3-part series how to grow a micro-greens salad.For larger images, just click on any one of these pictures. —Zana
29) When you’ve harvested all the greens, you can compost the remaining root mat in your own compost bin so that after two or three months of recycling your soil mats and vegetable scraps, you can use your own compost rather than having to buy it from your local gardening shop. Doing a compost system is very simple, with a pair of bins. To start off, take a bin, drill holes in it for drainage:
30) The bin will need to be elevated for drainage, I have used three equal height broken bricks for this. Set them up either outside…
31) …or inside, on a large plant pot tray to catch any drips or stray dirt. The final set up of two bins, one for putting in your fresh soil mats and vegetable scraps, the other one full and sitting for two or three months to reach maturity, can be put in a kitchen corner, under a table, or in a cupboard.
32) Put your remaining soil mat into the bin.
33) Chop it up with a small hand spade.
34) Add your kitchen vegetable scraps.
35) Mix well with a gardening hand fork.
36) And cover.
This method of reclaiming topsoil is as important a skill to learn as growing the shoots themselves. Knowing how to produce good quality soil is essential. The art of composting is the foundation of self sufficiency. Just buy a handful of compost earthworms from your local gardening shop and this method is complete. Once the first bin is full, begin filling the second, only returning to the first to turn it once a week and it will reach maturity and be ready to use again after two or three months.
Your three part series of articles on micro greens is great… You seamlessly pull together a complete method that integrates growing greens in soil, then recycling the used soil, recycling kitchen waste, and doing a really simple no-fuss form of worm composting. Really great! Thank you.
Thanks, Jeff. I can’t take credit for it… Emma Hollister kindly let me post it. See links to her site at the top of this page. — Zana
I tried exploring the link you provided (to Emma Hollister’s web site) but I couldn’t find anything like the articles you posted here. Emma’s website reminds me of the rabbit hole in “Alice in Wonder Land”… I started feeling dizzy. So thanks for pulling them out…
I think she has added them now but for a while she didn’t have them up there.
Zana,
Thank you so much for the informative and clear steps to growing micro greens indoors. You provided me with a great start to not only growing my own greens but also beginning the process of the engaging in the entire life cycle that includes the recycling of soil through composting. I have one question: if I want to grow greens such as kale or mustard in this way, must the seeds indicate that they are micro?
Thanks again!
Jen, they need to not be treated seeds, like you might get from a conventional gardening catalog, but if they are meant for any kind of sprouting, they will be fine.
I thought I’d plant some seeds for microgreens and just bought a bunch of organic seeds from the nursery. I didn’t buy seeds labeled for sprouting in particular, which they also had for sale. Are seeds, even organic ones, treated with something unhealthy? Do I need to buy only seeds labeled for sprouting?
I always buy seeds for sprouting, or use seeds I have harvested from my garden beds, so I don’t know. Suggest you email the seed vendor with your question as most are probably fine but I suppose some might not be.