Day 14: Microgreens

It’s been exactly 20 days since I planted my very first kitchen garden crop, baby Bok Choy, at the Square Foot Gardening workshop I went for at Daily Dump.

Bok Choy seedlings: Day 3 and Day 20

When I planted the seeds I was told that you should always plant about 2 or 3 seeds in each seed pit so that you have a better chance of getting one healthy plant from each pit. Often more than one of these seeds will germinate and grow into a seedling, but the smaller weaker ones must be removed to prevent crowding and competition around the healthiest seedling.

Now the seedlings have reached a 4-to-6-leaf stage and it is easy to identify which seedling is the strongest in each pit. So this evening I removed the smaller seedlings (pruning is best done in the evenings).

But it seemed such a shame for all the unfortunate seedlings that didn’t make the cut to end up in the bin or compost pot, especially since they were also fairly healthy seedlings, and edible, too. Then an idea struck me! Eating baby plants is quite a popular trend at the moment, fashionably calling them ‘micro-greens’!

So since I had these little seedlings, I decided to use this opportunity to see what the excitement is all about.

I made a micro-green salad with champaign-mustard vinaigrette.

Verdict: They are delightfully crunchy, with a very mild chlorophyll flavor – one I immediately associated with fond childhood memories of secretly eating wild clovers, except that these didn’t have the slight tang of clover leaves. They also make quite an adorable looking salad. Apart from that, there have also been many suggestions that micro-greens have a higher nutritional value than their full-grown counterparts. So I’d say they’re pretty neat little things.