Sustainable Farm Journal

In my first successful harvest of microgeens, sunflowers yielded .24 pounds from one tray, and radish also yielded about the same amount at .23 pounds. The sunflower tray was sparse and could have been sown more densely. The radishes took a tumble in the greenhouse after I bumped into them, so I could not harvest the whole tray. Therefore, I expect that average yield from each 10-20 tray will be a quarter pound.

After almost a year of trying to grow microgreens for market and failing with each batch, I've finally had success. By using a mixture of coconut coir and perlite, and by placing my 10x20 trays in the natural sunlight of a temperature controlled greenhouse, my test trays of spicy radish microgreens and mild kale microgeens flourished into a healthy crop in 10 days. A test tray of sunflower microgreens is showing much better progress, but has not yet produced the results I'm looking for. I think that I have kept the growing medium too moist and a little bit of damping-off has occurred. I don't know if it is the sunlight that has brought about the desired results as compared to the artificial compact fluorescent lighting that I had been using before, or if its the fact that I have abandoned Sure-to-Grow brand growing pads in favor of a more traditional growing medium. It could be also a combination of these two which have produced a wholly improved growing environment fo