Grow Lettuce Microgreens Fast and Easy

Virtually any plant can be grown in the form of microgreens, which is just the even younger cousin of baby greens. Usually harvested about 8 to 20 days after planting, microgreens are the fastest crop you’ll grow in your garden.

Today we are going to grow lettuce or salad mix microgreens, which I consider to be one of the most basic types of microgreens you can grow, making them perfect for a beginner.

Material

Before we get into what you need to grow lettuce microgreens, keep in mind that these are just my recommendations to make the process a little smoother. You can also find many of these materials in your home, but if you want to invest in equipment, I recommend this:

Plant

Your first task is to properly prepare your trays. Do not skimp on the process here-proper preparation of the tray will help you avoid all sorts of problems as your microgreens grow. My technique is to add 4 cups of water to the bottom of the tray, then fill it with a 50/50 mixture of coconut fiber and fine potting soil. You don’t want large pieces of bark, stone, or other debris. The smoother and flatter the surface, the better!

For the salad mixture, I recommend 1 ounce of seeds, evenly distributed over the surface. You can use an Old Spice shaker if you want an extremely even spread, but even a simple drinking glass will work well. Avoid clumping the seeds together or uneven distribution…it this will lead to poor growth in these sections as the seeds germinate.

Once you have finished spreading your seeds, spray the tray again with your spray bottle and place another 1020 spread tray on top. Leave it in a warm, dark place for 1-2 days and spray once or twice a day as needed. Be sure to check your trays daily for signs of mold growth, which is one of the main problems associated with the growth of microgreens.

Growing

After 2 days, most of the seeds should germinate. Continue to mist for another 2 to 4 days and let your greens grow under the blackout dome. This period is crucial to raise the greens to a certain height before removing the dome and exposing it to light.

If you are afraid that your lettuce will look jaune…ne don’t! Remember that the sunlight turns the leaves of a plant green when it starts photosynthesis.

​After 4 days, you can remove the darkening dome and expose your greens to the light. Growing outdoors works great, but I prefer to keep mine indoors under LED lighting to ensure I have a consistent environment for growing my microgreens. They will turn green after about 36 hours and will only continue to grow and become healthier if you let them age!

You will know that your micro slave leaves are ready to be harvested when you can see the first signs of “real leaves”. The first leaves that develop on your plants are actually the leaves of the seeds-they were already formed in the seed husk. Therefore, they do not look like the normal leaves that would grow from a salad plant.

You can harvest when you see the first sign of real leaves, or wait for these real leaves to grow a little. Your yield will increase, but the time it takes to grow your tray will also increase.

Harvest

There are many techniques for harvesting your microgreen trays. Some use knives, others use scissors, and some commercial producers have specialized harvesters. I like that the lawn shears work quite well because the cutting blade is parallel to the surface of the tray. You can “mow” your greens with ease.

Be careful not to pull the roots out of the ground and be sure to sacrifice about 1/2″ of STEM to make sure you don’t accidentally harvest debris or seed shells. The last thing you want to do is wash your micro-vegetables. This slightly damages them, and also reduces their shelf life by about 30%!