What are microgreens | best baby greens for India

What are microgreens ? To begin with microgreens are a new form of superfood and are very popular worldwide. Therefore, microgreens have been inducted into the list of Superfoods by World Health organization. They are little greens grown from vegetables and herbs in just a week and are full of essential vitamins and minerals! Microgreens are seedlings, vegetables, and herbs that have formed roots, stems, and first leaves called cotyledons, and sometimes young real leaves. When using microgreens, only eat stems and leaves.

You may have seen microgreens in fancy restaurants around the world. They are very popular with top chefs because of their beautiful appearance, taste and high content of vitamins. In your own kitchen, those tiny greens on your favorite dish will transfer your homemade regular pasta from simply to WOW. We can use these in top ups of Idly, dosa, omelet, salads, soups and spicy curries for Indian tastes. Beautify your breakfast with this healthy superfood or add it to your favorite burger. For a super healthy experience, try them with lemon, spinach and pear in a green smoothie!

By the way, microgreens look pretty much the same, but when you taste it, you’ll notice the differences. For a mild, sweet taste, try pok choi, and for a stronger, peppery taste, you may want to choose radishes, which go really well with salads and add that extra kick to your sandwich or burger! Test to find the ones you like the most.

How to grow microgreens indoors

Also, microgreens are super fast to grow. As an example, Radish and broccoli are ready for harvest in just 7 days. Because microgreens can produce the same nutritional value as ripe greens in much less time and with much fewer resources, they are very environmentally friendly. When you grow them locally in your own hydroponic-grown kitchen, your overall carbon footprint becomes even smaller and you are on an exciting path to becoming self-sufficient in your greenery.

In conclusion, readymade microgreen growing kits are available online. You can purchase. Kits available in India have a good plastic tray with appropriate drainage holes, ready excellent organic rich growing medium (soil mix), 3 or 4 sets of organic microgreen seeds in boxes, small hand water sprayer or sprinkler, instruction manual etc.

1. Open the kit. Take out the 600 mm * 300 mm * 30 mm platic tray.
2. Fill the tray with compound rich growing medium.
3. Sprinkle the seeds on the soil mix with minute gap in between them
4. Sprinkle water on the tray once in a day or two. Try to keep the soil most.
5. Cover the tray with some cover. Put the tray in a closed place in darkness for 3 days.
6. Let the seeds germinate. After the small sprouts shoot up bring the tray outside.
7. Keep the tray in your balcony, window or any other place so that the tray is exposed to direct sunlight for 5 hours a day.
8. Harvest and enjoy in 7 to 14 days.
9. When harvesting, lift the mesh panels of the tray and cut the stems 1 cm above the growth area with scissors or a sharp knife.

List of baby greens trending in India now

1. Wheat grass
2. Flag seed or black chia baby greens
3. Mustard baby greens
4. Methi baby greens
5. Amaranthus red stem
6. Basil
7. Radish
8. Beet root
9. Sunflower
10. Brocolli

The content of vitamins and minerals in microgreens

Microgreens not only grow quickly, but are also super healthy and delicious! Particularly, they have a high concentration of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Further, studies have shown that red cabbage microgreens can contain up to 40 times more vitamin E than ripe red cabbage! For example: A handful of red cabbage microgreens contains as many vitamins, antioxidants and nutrients as 2 kg of red cabbage. Think about it!

In conclusion microgreens have high concentrations of

Minerals like:
calcium
magnesium
iron
zinc
Vitamins
A, B, C, E and K.
Antioxidants
Polyphenols (help you with cholesterol, weight gain and cardiovascular diseases)

Microgreen growing ready kits are available in Hyderabad.