Planting baby greens can help change your life, become a helpful tool for coping with stressful stages in life, bring new knowledge, and experience, broaden your horizons, share experiences, and not stop there. Big things in small steps.
How do green activities build a sustainable mindset?
Imagine the joy of nurturing a miniature garden right in your kitchen. In just a matter of days, you could be harvesting vibrant, nutritious greens to elevate your meals. Growing microgreens offers an array of benefits that make it an enticing endeavor.
Additionally, these greens are considered a superfood. What does that mean? They are small, tender shoots that are harvested within weeks of sprouting, rather than allowed to mature fully. Their superpower sets them apart from other garden produce, delivering exceptionally high levels of essential nutrients. Collecting them is incredibly easy—whether on a windowsill, balcony, or in your garden, you can grow them everywhere.
Caring for small sprouts fosters mindfulness, helping you stay present and find peace in nature. Ultimately, breeding microgreens enhances your well-being and serves as a fulfilling outlet for relaxation and creativity.
Benefits of Growing Microgreens
What about growing microgreens for stress relief through home gardening? This pleasant hobby distracts people from everyday worries, calms the nervous system, and strengthens your connection with nature. It significantly reduces stress, anxiety, and symptoms of depression. Designing your garden – choosing plants, pots, and layout – becomes a rewarding, creative process that effectively relieves stress and improves well-being. Such creative thought processes are an excellent stress reliever.
When you finally receive your first harvest and experience the joy of your efforts, your mood lifts, and feelings of joy and pride wash over you. In a word, gardening has a positive effect on emotional intelligence and mental health. Furthermore, growing microgreens from vegetable seeds, grains, and herbs can be a source of great pride and satisfaction. Seeing the results of your labors can boost your self-esteem and give you a sense of accomplishment.
Fresh air and sunlight are essential for good physical condition. By tending to seedlings in your garden, balcony, or terrace, you saturate your body with oxygen, improve the quality of your sleep, and also get vitamin D, which is essential for strong bones and immunity.
Physical health benefits from fresh, nutritious produce
While you tend to your greenhouse, it simultaneously benefits you. The bounty of fresh sprouts will enchant you with their vibrant colors, diverse flavors, and delightful aromas. These tiny greens boast a nutritional density that far surpasses that of fully-grown vegetables. Opting for microgreens is one of the best investments you can make for your health.
Baby greens contain plenty of vitamins (A, B, C, E, K), minerals (magnesium, Iron, Zinc, Potassium, Calcium), and antioxidants for scavenging free radicals, such as carotenoids, beta-carotene, glucosinolates (Sulforaphane), etc. They also provide an extra source of fiber. These unique, low-fat products are highly nutritious and come with numerous health benefits. How can you incorporate microgreens into your diet? You can easily add them to soups, sandwiches, bowls, or smoothies. Microgreens not only enhance flavor but also support your health by boosting metabolism, reducing inflammation, and strengthening your immune system. Additionally, they may help lower cancer risk factors.
But keep in mind, like any product, juicy seedlings should be consumed within reasonable limits. Examine what to eat to avoid food allergens.
Environmental impact and sustainability
The main principle of green gardening is to maintain the balance of the environment when human intervention is minimal. Since growing green sprouts requires much fewer resources than cultivating crops in fields or plantations, this greatly reduces the use of natural resources and energy.
The root system of microgreens does not have time to reach large sizes, leaves and branches do not require pest control and fertilizing, they do not require highly fertile soil, and larger areas for fields. Consequently, important natural sources and habitats of wild animals, birds, and insects are saved.
Water is not polluted by industrial waste. Exhaust haze does not pollute the atmosphere, the protective ozone layer is not reduced. Furthermore, a green home farmer minimizes his carbon footprint, keeping water, air, and land clean.
These tips align with the principles of sustainable living, promoting eco-friendly and responsible well-being.
Getting Started Your Microgreens Journey
Growing microgreens at home is a fun and rewarding process that doesn’t require much effort. What’s necessary to help you start?
Necessary materials and where to find them
Anyone can grow them at home with minimal effort, resources, equipment, and gardening accessories. No special skills, experience, or training is required and it will save your budget from making impulse purchases at garden centers or home improvement stores.
A huge advantage of microgreens is that they are an excellent alternative to seasonal greens, especially in autumn and winter, when there is no opportunity to harvest in the garden. This is an all-season product.
What are the easiest microgreens to grow at home? To begin, it is advisable to buy a beginner’s ready-made kit. What does it include? It’s a miniature eco-farm containing everything you need for the first step: a variety of seeds, a pot, a mat, or a container for germination. Some are so easy to use that you only have to install the system and watch the crop grow. Such mini-farms are ideal for germinating sprouts and green shoots and do not require pre-soaking of seeds. They come equipped with a moisture generator and a sprayer with an automatic cleaning system.
If these kits aren’t your preference, you can always explore other options that suit everyone. By following the instructions, you’ll discover the easiest way to grow microgreens at home.
Choosing the right microgreens to grow
In the autumn-winter period, when there are not enough sun rays, we recommend paying attention to arugula, watercress, radish, and mustard. These plants do not require a constant bright natural light source or additional illumination with LED lamps. Lighting is needed to form chlorophyll (regulator of growth efficiency). The more chlorophyll, the stronger the sprout is and the faster you will get your harvest. The best microgreens to grow indoors that are easy to germinate are cereals (wheat, oats, sunflower, flax, amaranth), legumes (peas, soybeans, lentils, clover, alfalfa), vegetables, and salad greens (leeks, spinach, lettuce, pak choi). Some may wonder what microgreens can be grown in a jar. Opt for healthy greens like dill, parsley, cilantro, basil, and coriander.
Step-by-Step Growing Guide
Breeding microgreens at home can be an enjoyable and rewarding activity that requires no special skills or equipment.
Preparing the growing area
The major preference for microgreens is that they do not require large spaces, such as for seedlings. They are grown in containers on the windowsill, in pots on balconies and terraces, even if there is no space at all in the house – for example, vertical growing. The choice of location for your mini eco-farm depends on your accommodation and surrounding space.
Here are some practical tips on various growing methods:
- How to grow microgreens indoors: the first step is to buy a set of seeds and containers with a suitable substrate, water, and lightning.
- How to grow microgreens in a jar: to build your first mini greenhouse you may reuse glasses or containers. They must be clean, transparent, wide, or with enough volume inside. The great sustainable settlement for growing.
- How to grow microgreens indoors in tray breeding microgreens on a windowsill or balcony can be implemented by using an alternative product without pesticides and pollutants instead of soil – special mats – linen, bamboo, coconut, or peat substrate.
- How to grow microgreens outdoors: to grow greens outside during the warm season from spring to autumn, you can grow them in a covered garden bed or terrace. For apartment dwellers, this can be done on a balcony.
These tips will assist you in growing healthy microgreens anywhere.
Planting, watering, and caring for microgreens
Talking about how to grow microgreens in a jar indoors, firstly, take care of choosing your preferred seeds.
Then, with step-by-step instructions, start growing your green crop:
- prepare a wide container for germination;
- pre-soak the seeds;
- fill the bottom of the container with soil or substrate in a 2-inch layer;
- spread the seeds on the surface of the soil;
- water generously;
- and carefully sprinkle with soil;
- cover the container with a lid or plastic wrap.
After the first step is taken, observe further. Place the container on a well-lit windowsill.
After the sprouts appear, remove the lid, and spray the sprouts several times a day from a spray bottle. It is also important to remember to ventilate the container to prevent mold from growing.
Harvesting and using microgreens in meals
When 1-2 true leaves appear, it’s time to pickle your first greens. On average, it takes one to two weeks for sprouts to appear.
Rinse the harvested greens under running water and enjoy the unique freshness, juiciness, piquant taste, and rich palette of flavors. People use fresh or dried microgreen herbs, which are stored for a long time in the refrigerator if wrapped in paper. They are used as a juicy ingredient in dressers, or sources, in salads, as a side dish to meat, as a texturizer and nutrient in soups and smoothies, as a pasta topping, or as a sandwich filling.
As a versatile ingredient, they are revered by Michelin restaurant chefs, traditional home-cooked meal fans, and street food lovers.
Enhancing the Experience
Exploring new experiences is always thrilling and rewarding. Growing microgreens is a fantastic way to enjoy time while benefiting health, it gives the chance to share new achievements with others.
Involving friends or family
While you can start growing the microgreens all by yourself, you can also try sharing your experience with friends and family. Many are interested in the problem of environmental pollution and finding a way to solve it, but the problem is to decide what you need to focus on. You can inspire others to start living an eco-friendly life with your example of conscious consumption of natural resources. You may share your story of how to grow microgreens at home indoors with neighbors. Who knows, the story of one pot of tender grass will grow into an entire community tending to a green quarter of a metropolis?!
Joining or forming gardening groups
Cultivating microgreens at home is a wonderful way to connect with new people and build friendships. Consider joining gardening clubs, volunteering for local green initiatives, or chatting with neighbors who share your passion. It’s also possible to look into the environmental foundations active in the local community for more opportunities to engage.
Taking a proactive and mindful approach, along with volunteering and actively supporting eco-friendly projects, can help you reassess your values. This transformation starts with you and extends to your surroundings, creating a community of like-minded individuals.
Keeping a gardening journal
How else can you track the process? Start keeping a gardening diary or launch your blog. By sharing videos and photos on digital platforms, you can enjoy the benefits of content monetization, turning your passion into passive income. Write down your daily observations, implications, and conclusions. Track your progress and praise yourself.
The daily ritual of writing in a notebook develops a new habit and organizes discipline. And the next season will please you with an even greater harvest, and a variety of vegetation.
If time management is a challenge, keeping a daily gardening diary can help establish a consistent routine in your schedule. This practice strengthens your willpower and fosters new neural connections. Analyze the mistakes taking them into account to achieve greater efficiency.
Conclusions
The idea of growing microgreens at home as a conscious decision to show concern for the environment and the future is becoming more and more popular every day. New things are well forgotten old ones!
Gardening is more than just a hobby. It’s a conscious choice to nurture both the environment and our well-being. In a world where stress is rampant, gardening offers a serene escape and a way to recharge.
Author
Anna Smirnova
Content writer on https://rythmoftheworld.com From my practicing in science, I brought the skills of discovering, analyzing, and explanation. I adore art, photography, traveling, hiking, and winter.
