I’m not sure one can grow microgreens and not at least be a little curious about growing wheat grass, and so here we are starting to grow wheat grass.   The nutritional information on broccoli microgreens is very impressive, but reading up on the health benefits of routine and modest amounts of wheat grass juice is astounding.

Step one was to find a source of wheat berries.  Yes, that’s what they’re called.  Wheat berries.  I had to ask the stock ladies at Walmart if they stocked them, and after checking in the rice isle, the isle that carried wheat germ and an isle that had some specialty grains like bulgar, we had to give up.  She was still happy to learn that the seeds used to grow wheat are called wheat berries.  Next stop; Amazon.

It’s only now that I realize that the juicer I already own would be insufficient to juice wheat grass.  So, second step is to procure an economy, cast iron manual juicer.  That was found on clearance from Walmart online for $40 delivered, and it showed up a week earlier than expected!

Third step is to soak a cup of wheat berries overnight in a mason jar.  Drain it the next morning, and the rinse and drain about every 12 hours, keeping the jar tipped upside down in a bowl in the dark with a mesh lid for a day or so until you see little white tails sticking out of the wheat berries (see picture below).

In the fourth step, we spread them out evenly over about a half inch of garden soil and keep in the dark while it grows initially, then in light to green it up.  Once the wheat grass is grown, I’m going to trim it and juice it.  Yes, you can let it grow back and re-cut it a second time, but we probably wouldn’t continue to grow the same tray after that.

Reading up on the nutritional benefits of consuming wheatgrass juice, I’m convinced it is even more beneficial to one’s body than our broccoli microgreens.  So we got the wheat berries, and already have the growing equipment.  The only thing left we had to acquire to get this experiment going was a manual juicer.

The highly fibrous wheat grass, apparently, won’t juice well in our traditional juicer.  Fortunately I found a cast iron juicer online on clearance marked down to $40 including shipping.  That’s not too high of a hurdle for good nutrition, so I am rolling the dice thinking this may be something we will incorporate into our diets.

The first step is to soak the wheat berries overnight.  Then for a couple of days we will rinse and drain and keep them in darkness until they start to sprout.  After that, we transfer then into one of our growing trays with minimal soil, watering them daily and watching it grow.  We should be able to get “two cuts” from the wheat grass tray, meaning after we cut and consume it the first time, we can leave it to grow back another time.

Stay tuned … I should be posting about the end result in about a week or two!

Below are my pictures of a tray of diakon radish grown on coconut coir mat for the first time for me. One ounce of seed was sprinkled on a mat soaked in H2O2 and covered with vermiculite, uncovered and under lights 5 days later and harvested another 5 days later. Yield is 8.5 ounces. (first 3 pictures)

In October I dry seeded one ounce of diakon radish seed on soil and covered it with soil. It was uncovered 3 days later, harvested 6 days after that, and the yield was nearly 16 ounces. (4th picture)

Now conclusions should not be drawn from just one or two data points, but I believe there might be a lesson in here that the nutrients in the organic soil mix may produce a larger yield.  The experiments will continue.  There are still some advantages in growing with a non-soil grow medium (mainly that live plants are more kitchen friendly if there is no soil) but yield is obviously an important part of the equation.

I think these sunflowers and broccoli microgreens are ready to harvest.

The sunflowers were grown in coconut coir with a top layer of coconut coir. The process looked concerning to me, with the sunnies pushing up blobs of the coconut coir on top. I continued top watering until the last couple of days, and I am pretty well satisfied with the end result and greatly diminished seed head issue.

The broccoli microgreens were also grown in coconut coir but this time I used course vermiculite as the top coating. I like this better. The vermiculite fell from the top as the broccoli microgreens grew and there was a massively positive impact on avoiding the seed head issue.

Ecclesiastes 1:16

I said to myself, “Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.”

So far I am simply loving these new sturdy 1″ trays I’ve acquired to grow microgreens.  They are a bit larger than the standard 1020 trays, but I think I’ve found a solution for the bottom tray dilemma.  Being able to see the full height on the microgreen (below is daikon radish pictured) is more impressive, and will be easier to harvest.  Also, I tried covering the seeds with a layer of soil when planted, and that does indeed seemed to have helped with drastically reducing the seed heads remaining in the mircrogreens, which means I’m getting a better end product for people to enjoy.  This is what I’m seeing just after 5 days since seeding my new trays!

Mad scientist that I am, there is no shortage of experiments going on around here in HumblevilleUSA.  Curtis Stone, the Urban Farmer on Youtube, was raving about this 1″ durable plastic trays from paperpot.co and I was all to excited to get my hands on some.  I think once I think through my automatic irrigation system, these trays will be perfect for our microgreen production expansion.

These trays are much more rigid and durable than the standard flimsy plastic 1020 trays.  The main challenge right now is that I don’t have a good bottom tray that will fit underneath to harness any over-watering, and ideally when the microgreens are taller the bottom watering method seems to work much better.  These trays are slightly larger at 1’x2′ basic dimensions versus the standard 10″ x 20″ tray, so finding a food grade quality solid tray for underneath is a challenge.

Ultimately, I think I will be building a custom trough that fits a series of these trays so then this challenge won’t be an issue.  Framed in wood and lined with a pond liner or similar material, I think that would be the ultimate solution.  But for now, the experiments continue!