this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Nature and Gardening
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I received a small (6-ish spaces) hydroponics kit two Christmases ago, and grew a few strawberry plants in it last year following the instructions that came with it. We never really got any strawberries off of them, but the plants themselves did wonderfully until the cats got to them.
This year I'd like to try something more "useful", like fresh herbs or micro greens (both of which are rather expensive to buy where I live). Does anybody have tips for how to start these, and places (in the US or that ship to it) that might carry seeds for the micro greens? I'm also concerned about running out of the "fertilizer" that came with the kit.
AFAIK, micro greens are just regular greens that you plant really close together and then harvest before they get mature.
Please someone correct me if this isn't technically microgreens but what I've done in the past to get mini salad greens is you just get one of those larger seedlings trays (or you can use old milk cartons cut in half), put some soil in it, and plant seeds in really dense rows (like >10 seeds an inch). Then you just harvest them when they get to be an inch tall or something similar. I just use regular collard, kale, mustard, and lettuce seeds from the garden shop.
You can also grow stuff from the grocery store. One of my favorites to grow is pea shoots. You literally buy a bag of dried peas from the grocery store and plant them like I described above. Then harvest them when they get about 3-4 inches tall. They go great in spring salads. Mung beans are another grocery store staple that I love sprouting on my own instead of buying the sprouts.
Not sure what your kit looks like but you can definitely grow micro greens in potting soil as well if you run out of whatever the kit has! Just make sure you're keeping an eye on moisture so they don't stay too wet or get too dry. Because micro greens are basically seedlings, you don't actually need to fertilize them at all and they can actually grow in pretty spare soil.
I haven't really played around with hydroponics but another veggie grower near me is almost exclusively on them. He gets the bulk of his supplies from growerssupply.com and from what I can tell he's been pretty happy with them. Fingers crossed we get some folks who can speak more to this part of your question for you!
For herb seeds, I've been really happy with what we've received from FedCo and Strictly Medicinal Seeds. FedCo has a nice selection particularly for the New England region of the US but Strictly Medicinal has absolute tons of awesome stuff that won't like it near me (but also bunches that will)