Microgreens for your plate | Growing your first kitchen-garden

 Microgreens  for your plate…

Microgreens are tiny herbs and vegetable shoots used as ingredients in food, a full plate protein-rich diet or for embellishing your dishes. Want examples? The fragrant mint (pudina) or coriander (dhaniya) you use to garnish your plates are microgreens right there. Likewise, seedlings of carrots, peas etc are used as microgreens in salads.                                                      

Let’s see more of these and how you can grow your own microgreens at home, for some extra proteins to decorate your plate. In city apartments, cultivating your own microgreens is a good way to start a mini kitchen garden. It’s simple.

• Why are they called microgreens and how are they used in food?

Seeds of a crop are used for growing vegetables and leaves, but when we talk about microgreens, they are the first leaves of the germinating seeds. The baby seedlings are harvested when they are no taller than an inch or two. They add colour and texture and make the food more flavourful.

Once harvested, they should be consumed at the earliest possible, otherwise the leaves eventually dry out and lose their freshness and nutritional value.

Now, the good news is that there is no hard and fast rule as to how you should use these baby seedlings in your food. It’s totally up to you. Get creative, get experimental in the kitchen. Cafes and restaurants use them in a variety of dishes, as a stylish and healthy topping on the freshly prepared food. They go perfectly well with sandwiches, main courses, desserts and even soups! Once you get the hang of it, you can go ahead and use these delicious flavours to your benefit.

• How to grow microgreens ?

Microgreens are ideal crops for those of us who do not have a dedicated space for gardening. A simple idea would be to use empty cans and tins or plastic containers or pots to grow these. They do not particularly have an ideal climate requirement or something like that. Going by the name itself, a kitchen garden will thrive perfectly in the indoors of your home. This won’t even take up too much of your time since these are to be harvested young and fresh. Once you start, you will be astonished to know that you can pretty much grow most of the greens.

Note down a point over here, that is, you mustn’t allow water logging in the containers. To tackle this, it is suggested that you make small holes at the bottom of the containers so that the extra water would drain out.

Fill the containers with any good humus-rich soil. In case that is unavailable, you can also use a damp muslin cloth on a tray. But in this case, you should make sure that you spray ample water at regular intervals so that the cloth  base doesn’t dry up, as that moisture is what the seeds will utilize to sprout.

• Why to grow microgreens?

Research says that if you go by nutritional value, microgreens are seen to be richer in vitamins than their fully grown crops. This is easy to reason out, as we know that the seed manufactures high amounts of nutrients to enable the embryo to grow and thrive. But once the plant is grown, the nutrients have already been consumed. That is the reason these seedlings should be harvested young, so that their nutritional value can be procured to its best, and they should be consumed early after harvesting, for the same reason. Microgreens have been found to be loaded with vitamins and essential anti-inflammatory and beneficial compounds.

Another reason is that growing microgreens doesn’t require too much of an expertise, and as such it is the best way for naïve and new home gardeners to start with gardening.

Hmmm…these reasons don’t seem enticing enough? Well, you always have the bottom-line for that, which is – Microgreens enhance the flavour of your food! :D

• Best choice of Microgreens for the Indian kitchen

There is absolutely no shortage of microgreens that you can grow to supplement the Indian cuisine. Varieties like fenugreek (methi), mustard, wheatgrass, coriander, mint, Bengal gram, mung bean etc have been around in kitchen gardens for years now.

You can also take it on your own to add and combine other greens depending on your taste and creativity. 

So, don’t forget to add a handful of these baby seedlings on to your plate!