Micro Greens

The Newest Culinary Trend

Think of micro greens as a gourmet vegetable confetti,full of intense flavor and stunning visual texture and color, made from a variety of crops harvested at the seedling stage.

Micro greens have become very popular with urban chefs.

Wally Satzewich of Spin Farming writes about the way to grow these tiny wonders. He says that one should prepare a bed about 2 feet wide and 12 feet long. This is easily done using hand tools. Then with a hoe, make four or five shallow furrows for the full length and seed quite thickly by hand a 50/50 mixture of China Rose radish and Red Daikon radish.

Cover the furrow with soil using a rake and soak the bed and water when necessary. There should be a good crop in about 10 days.Wally’s yield was 2.5 lbs per bed.

Micro greens using radishes can only be cut once so in order to have a continuous supply you must replant weekly. I have chosen to plant more diverse seeds because then I can harvest several times before having to go to a new bed. When I use my mix, I can recut two or three times. However, the radish leaves will appear only once.

I use the following organic seeds in my mix. Pink Beauty, Cherry Bell, White Icicle and French Breakfast radishes and mizuna, arugula and minutinae. Other fast germinating seeds could be used such as arugula, cabbage, beet, chard, cress and mustard.

Commercial growers for the restaurant trade often prefer to grow each variety separately so chef's custom blends can be easily created.

These beautiful greens can added to other salad mixes or used on top of a salad of beets or pears. They can be used as a garnish or flavoring for soups or sprinkled with care over entrees. Their intense flavor and visual interest makes them especially attractive at the table.