Grow your own fresh salad greens at home easily. Simply plant your microgreen seeds into potting soil in an empty container and cover with a wet paper towel and lightly water. Close and wait for 5 days. After your seeds sprout remove the paper towel and leave in the sun! Snip greens to add to sandwichs or as a salad!
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Using discarded foam egg containers, separate the top from the bottom. Cut holes in the bottom of each individual egg compartment and fit the lid beneath the bottom. Moisten some seed starting top soil and fill eleven of the separate compartments'.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
My question is whether I can incorporate dryer lint into shredded paper pulp to create mats for growing microgreens or sprouting. I am going to try this soon, just wondered if anyone had tried it before.
The short answer is yes it works.
The longer answer is I personally wouldn't use it for foods, but flowers definitely.
Dyes from fabric would worry me if it leached into my food. This is the same reason I never used shredded newspaper in the veggie garden. Ink and my food gives me an ick factor.
I am overly sensitive to chemicals and such. I am sure most people would not be bothered.
Happy planting! Hope you work it out!!
*** I would not use dryer lint especially if you use any kind of softener in your wash or dryer (or even vinegar in rinse water?).
I only know one person who does this type of gardening and she uses purchased mats or 1 inch organic potting soil and she says that each method costs about $1 per tray. Her greens always taste delicious.
She said she tried shredded paper and also shredded paper with coffee grounds (found "menu" online) but found the taste was not as great as with soil and that it was messy and sometimes had a bad odor.
Here is an excerpt from a university site:
"recommends buying plain, inexpensive potting soil. There's no need to buy an expensive potting soil because the plants will be ready for harvest in 10-14 days, which isn't long enough to take advantage of fertilizers or other additives that can drive up the price of store-bought soil. Only add a half inch of soil to the container."
For those who are not familiar with growing Microgreens here are a couple of links that might spark your interest.
www.bootstrapfarmer.com/
www.mnn.com/
I have tried several inexpensive ways to grow micro greens and none are very good. Dirt is the worst, as it clings to the plants and is very hard to get them clean. Vermiculite didn't seem to work very well for me. Jiffy pellets worked great, but it's a lot of trouble to get seeds in the little pellets and they are pricey to buy. I was considering trying leftover coffee grounds as I know they are clean and because they are free :-) Any other suggestions for cheap or free medium for growing these greens?
By Linda H
You can purchase grow mats that are specifically made for micro greens, but they might cost more than you want to spend. Many people use a soilless potting mix.
I agree that soil as a grow medium is messy (dirt clinging to greens), and after experimenting with paper towels and even thoroughly soaked cardboard, I've found that water - all by itself - is effective. Check out youtube tutorials and something called the Kratky method (although I've found sprouts do just fine without the nutrient solution). Also check out centexcooks.com/
